Love Letter to a Garden

Design Matters podcaster Millman (Why Design Matters) presents an expressive celebration of gardening. Pairing images with tender reminiscences of a life spent working in the soil, Millman suggests that she “began to associate gardening with wonder” after unearthing a dollar bill while planting apple seeds in her grandparents’ Brooklyn backyard and supplements her memory with watercolor renderings of apples and a photograph of light shining through the leaves of a mossy tree. Recounting her faltering efforts to start her own garden as an adult, Millman discusses how even hardy rhododendrons and boxwoods perished in the plots she cultivated in the backyards of her Manhattan abodes until a neighbor taught her the ropes of urban gardening. Elsewhere, she details lessons she learned from the activity, as when she describes how watching a seed grow into a tree taught her the value of patience. The dreamy illustrations of daisies, roses, tomato plants, and other flora will inspire in readers the same sense of awe that Millman feels while working with nature, and recipes that Millman’s wife, Roxane Gay, developed to make use of the foods produced in their garden are a bonus, detailing how to make panzanella, tomato galette, and shaved carrot salad, among other dishes. Gardeners will relish this reverent offering. (Apr.)