One Man's Garden - by Henry Mitchell (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A wry, month-by-month chronicle of triumphs, mishaps, and magnificent obsessions across a year in a Washington city garden.

In the sequel to The Essential Earthman, the Washington Post columnist offers a harvest of sharp observations and humorous adventures gathered during a year in his garden, along with much down-to-earth advice on horticulture.

Mitchell balances the comedy of basement seed-starting and unruly houseplants with practical counsel on cultivating tea roses, building lily pools, and outlasting garden weeds.

The essays follow each season across his city plot, detailing the stubborn architecture of woody hedges alongside the brief perfection of spring daffodils and summer water lilies.

• Water Garden: Practical guidance on converting galvanized stock tanks into thriving pools, selecting hardy goldfish, and positioning bamboo stakes as perches for visiting dragonflies.
• Garden Design: Architectural principles for small city plots, prioritizing durable enclosures of yew and box over restless clutter, with wide brick walkways built for wheelbarrows.
• Natural World: Unsentimental encounters with urban wildlife, from outwitting garden squirrels and stubborn raccoons to sheltering Carolina wrens and planting trumpet vines for hummingbirds.
• Gardening Essays: A delightfully irreverent critique of horticultural orthodoxy, dismissing rigid planting charts and chemical sprays in favor of deep spade work and well-rotted manure.
• Also by This Author: Henry Mitchell on Gardening.

Review Quotes

Henry's Mitchell's writing "combined the cadences of the Book of Common Prayer with the timing of Jack Benny. He was humble, cantankerous, ironic, and forbearing. He is sorely missed" -- Allen Lacy