Book Shelf: ‘A Gardener’s Mindset’ by Stephen Orr

I’ve been sipping at Stephen Orr’s new hardbound essay collection, The Gardener’s Mindset: Connecting with Nature through Plants, for the past couple months, and then suddenly found myself consuming it in big gulps all at once. I was initially rationing it because a short essay or two is just the thing for blowing the pollen off of a stressful day before bed, let’s say, or good company with a cup of coffee on the back porch on an early summer morning. But then this week was full of backs and forths with other people dealing with assorted tedious or stressful circumstances, one after another, and I found myself picking it up in the gaps to read just a few calming pages ... well, every chance I got. I don’t have a whole lot to say about the book, other than that I think you would enjoy it, because that’s exactly what it is: enjoyable.

It’s, as I said, a collection of essays written by Orr, who spent a career as a garden writer, gardening editor (at magazines including Martha Stewart Living) and editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens. And it’s exactly the sort of good old-fashioned, over-the-fence garden chat that most gardeners would love to have more of in their lives. (Honestly it’s hard to not be like "Me too!” or “Ooh, I’ll try that variety next year” to the book, as if he’s really sitting there talking to you about whatever it is.) Its center of gravity is the garden he’s been making with his husband at their house on Cape Cod for the past few years. But he might be writing about the flowers he coveted in a neighbor lady’s yard as a little boy in West Texas — that he’s tracked down to plant in his own garden — and then next thing you know you’re comparing which lettuces you’ve had the most success with or swapping owl sighting stories. Except, right, he wasn’t actually sitting here. It’s a book! 

But it’s a book for garden lovers, about loving to garden. In amongst his early memories, magazine photo-shoot anecdotes, and current garden successes and travails, there is both practical advice and philosophizing. And also lots of pictures. One of my favorite things about the book wound up being that, after years of getting to work with the best garden photographers in the business, here they’re all his own pics — whether of his gardens (past and present), favorite flowers or famous gardens he’s visited. Plus drawings by his husband. All of which just adds to how personal and genuine the book is.

Ok, a confession. I started writing this when I actually had three pieces left to read: One about herbs (still unread), one titled “Ghosts,” and the Coda. Ghosts was by far my favorite piece in the book, and by the last line of the short coda, I was a little sad our time together had come to an end. Recommended.

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(Note: This book was sent to me by the publisher for potential review with no strings attached, in the longstanding tradition of the book industry.)