cover image Odd Lots: Seasonal Notes of a City Gardener

Odd Lots: Seasonal Notes of a City Gardener

Thomas C. Cooper. Henry Holt & Company, $20 (218pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-3741-8

""Good gardeners,"" writes Horticulture magazine's editor Cooper, ""like their gardens, are distilled from a slow brew of long experience and personal alchemy."" The same might be said of good garden books. In this one, Cooper, a master of the narrative essay, gathers a collection of editorials that, reading like letters to a friend, have justly earned him a wide and enthusiastic following. Organized by month, the essays take readers along with Cooper as he putters in his garden--pruning a little here, planning a dream potting shed there, trying to resist ""the siren songs of catalog writers"" when it comes to planting schemes. Whether it's a meditation on chickadees, (""ruffed collars pulled up high and their black caps down snug on their heads"") or a humorous digression into the fickleness of Mother Nature (the gardener who plans a weekend festivity ""stands an excellent chance of getting rain... while summer sits in a bus station somewhere, reading the sports page""). Cooper's literate prose blooms with bright wit and stands among the best garden writing this country's horticultural renaissance has produced. It's hard to imagine a better gift for a gardener. (Oct.)