cover image Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening

Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening

Fran Sorin. Warner Books, $22.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-446-53166-5

Garden designer Sorin invites readers to""unearth"" their""creative roots"" in a book long on platitudes and cheerful encouragement but unfortunately lacking in advice that would-be gardeners can put to real use. In the introduction (""what does it mean to be creative?""), Sorin sets the book's tone by explaining that her""mission is not to have everyone create world-class gardens, but...to show new and experienced gardeners alike how they can use their gardens...as tools for their creative awakening."" Accordingly, she organizes her book into""seven stages of creative unfolding"": Imagining, Envisioning, Planning, Planting, Tending, Enjoying and Completing. These are sensible divisions, certainly, but the exercises that Sorin provides offers within are not always inspiring (e.g.,""Ask yourself: What would I do in my garden if there were no limits on time or money?"";""Spend some time writing about times in your life when you followed your instincts, both in and outside your garden""). Even in sections like""Tips for Container Gardening,"" which offer numerous opportunities to introduce hands-on advice, Sorin's recommendations (""add water-retaining gel crystals"") are familiar. Sorin does provide some useful bits, listing, for example,""The Six Must-Have Gardening Tools"" and giving suggestions for controlling pests without using toxic chemicals. But the bulk of her book takes gardening as a metaphor for emotional and spiritual growth--which means that readers heading for the self-help aisles might like this volume better than those wandering through the gardening section.