The Invisible Garden

My bookclub has just finished reading this wonderful book. We all loved it; one member compared it to "Gifts from the Sea" with its evocation of quietude and solace. This is a book for gardeners, who will delight in the delicious insights Dorothy has as she hacks her way through the brambles beside her stream, as well as nongardeners, who will finally gain some insight into why gardeners delight in working the earth and transforming the landscapes outside ourselves into things of beauty. I found reading the essays enjoyable, humorous, and deeply satisfying. Each essay is easily read on its own, but together the book becomes a gardener's journal, a transcription of what goes on in a gardener's mind as she designs and transforms the land around her.

This is an enchanting book, subtle in working on many levels to capture and to hold your attention. The theme, intertwining the impact on her life of some family and friends with various aspects of gardening life, works surprisingly well. The workmanship is fine, in many senses of that word; as in grading gems, or in the weave of a great tapestry. It is something that her grandfather, or her neighbor Tom--both craftsmen in their own right, and important in her life--would recognize and admire. The style is somewhere between early John McPhee in The New Yorker, and Bill Bryson's latest book of essays, "I'm A Stranger..", between straight autobiographical and first-person commentary. It comes off very well, and you put down the book with some insight into a complex person still exploring herself and the world around her. The insight reflects into our own life, giving pause for reflection and reevaluation of important things we might have slighted in passing. Her sketches of the individuals she chooses to illuminate aspects of her own growth are simultaneously detached and loving. The chapter on her physicist husband's encounter with flowers shows the tender exasperation that any non-scientist wife of a scientist would instantly recognize. The vividness of a flashback to her grandfather's youth, spanning more than a century, pays a debt to his memory while showing us the unbroken chain of generations. So, too, the balance in "The Pond" chapter on her mother; and the nostalgia in the chapter on "Little Houses" grips each of us and thrusts us back to our childhood, where "-all the polyurethane of life-" can not intrude. A wonderful book, well worth reading. November 29, 1999

"The Invisible Garden" is a wonderful book.Even though it's set in Vermont,it reminded me of a "A year in Provence,"only better.There were laughs and a few tears,too. It's about gardens and also about people,about neighbors and family.I picked it up to dip into it,after my wife read it and loved it also.Even though neither one of us are gardeners, we both wanted it not to end..

"The Invisible Garden" is a wonderful book. Even though it's set in Vermont, it reminded me of "A Year in Provence," only better. There were laughs and a few tears,too.It's about gardens and also about people,about neighbors and family. I picked it up just to dip into it(even though I'm not a gardener), and I couldn't put it down.

The Invisible Garden brings forth the coming of age of a wise woman. As if sprouting from a single root system, flowering meadows and blossoming window boxes erupt from the souls of those who first brought them to Dorothy Sucher's summers. A beautifully moving tribute to her mother ripples through The Pond. Her warm affection for her husband illuminates One Man's Fuschia. And her admiration of her Vermont neighbors graces every Lady Slipper and wildflower like fresh New England morning dew. It is a "must read" for gardeners of the earth and of life itself.