Product Description

With the same warmth, wisdom, wit, and accessibility that readers have come to love and trust in her monthly column, House & Garden editor in chief Dominique Browning offers this lively, charming, and instructive story of restoring a neglected suburban garden.

When a retaining wall in Browning's New York suburban garden collapsed, she was forced into action. Paths of Desire is the enchanting, amusing, and moving account of making a garden -- and confronting the essence of suburban gardening, with its idiosyncratic ecosystem. This meant struggling with depraved skunks and raccoons, marauding teenagers, plastic jungle gyms, toppling garbage cans, uncontrollable eyesores, potholed drives, and all the grinding, honking, and buzzing of the neighborhood.

Browning's delightfully frank prose conveys the very sense of being deep in a garden, with all its organic smells and textures, and the myriad joys of deciding what to plant and watching as the vision is realized. It contains a rich store of advice and illustrative anecdotes for enthusiasts and novices alike, as Browning amusingly documents the missteps she took in the planning of her garden and the satisfactions of finally getting it right. In Paths of Desire she teaches us how to embrace our plots of land -- no matter their size, beauty, or proximity to the city -- and make them our own. But she also reminds us that the life of a garden can never be separated from the people who wander in and out of it: characters like the charming but useless children; the philosophical tree doctor and the band of Helpful Men; the neighbors -- legalistic on one side, aesthetically challenged on the other -- and, best and worst of all, the True Love.

By the end of the book, Browning has transformed her garden -- and her life -- and has created a place of enchantment, which is most of all what a garden should be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #944233 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"Desire paths," writes Browning, are defined by how people actually move from place to place, whether in physical space or emotionally and psychically. Browning (Around the House and in the Garden) recounts the creation of two desire paths: a "long and winding" one through her restored half-acre suburban garden, and an equally meandering one from the desolation of a broken marriage to the joyful rebuilding of both her garden and her life. Browning's century-old home may not be typical of today's suburbs, but what she contends with is. Raccoons, opossums and "neurotically evolved" skunks invade at night, as do beer-drinking teenagers. Dogs yap, horns honk and leaf blowers "grind all day." Warring with neighbors over "trees and walls and fences and garbage bins" is constant. Although "the suburban garden starts its life as a construction site," it is also a place where "nothing is impossible, and the only limitations on what you can do are your own will and imagination." Still, one needs "Helpful Men," a fraternity of roofers, masons, landscapers and tree surgeons who communicate by cell phone-almost exclusively with one another-and do not clean up. As Browning comes to rely more and more on "the Helpful Men" to fix the disorder in her garden, she gradually learns not to depend on "the True Love" to free her from the grasp of a rampant, flowerless wisteria and awaken her with a kiss. Instead, she discovers that her sons are showing "promising signs of usefulness" and sets out on an "endless" path in a "garden that springs from the heart."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
People frequently spring into action only when their backs are against the wall. In Browning's case, the wall would actually have to collapse before she would begin to make much-needed major changes in her garden, and in her life. When the downpour of a sudden storm undermines the foundation of a beloved garden wall, Browning is forced to deal with the daunting consequences of ruined plants, altered vistas, and expensive reconstruction. Contrary to her lofty position as editor in chief of the venerable House and Garden magazine, Browning lives a down-to-earth existence in suburbia, replete with the problematic noisy and noisome neighbors, confounding critters, and trespassing teenagers so familiar to her readers. Such obstacles present creative and practical challenges whose solutions only reveal themselves when Browning ultimately learns to follow the paths of her own heart's desire. Just as her garden must be, Browning's intimately personal chronicle is filled with lines of breathtaking beauty, simple in their understated elegance yet profound in their impact on the human psyche. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Michael Pollanauthor of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the WorldWith this delightful book, Dominique Browning takes her rightful place in the ongoing over-the-back-fence conversation among American gardeners, that tribe of literate amateurs -- writers first, horticulturists second -- who limn whole worlds in the space of a suburban yard.

Penelope Hobhousegarden historian and author of Gardens of PersiaDominique Browning celebrates her personal passion, making an engrossing and illuminating read. I loved the book.

Customer Reviews

Stellar!
If you enjoyed Jackson McCrae's THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD-A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens, you will LOVE this book. More than just some self-indulgent look at "her" problems, Browning has created a wonderful and witty account of what it's like, and what it takes to live in the suburbs. This well written and imaginative account will be in print for years to come.

I don't even garden
I had read a review of her book in the NYTimes and am a fan of the magazine she edits, so I bought the book. I fell in love with the story of collapse, confusion and renewal. Frankly the metaphor of the garden served as many a problem in one's own life. Wrap it all up in gorgeous prose and a compelling (yes! she makes a garden wall collapse and the ensuing drama exciting!) story and I had a book , I couldn't put down. Romantic and sometimes funny it's a good read for the gardener and non-gardener alike.

Charming
Sure, there's some great gardening advice in here, but mostly it's a charming story. The neighbors, the kids, the fix-it men, the romantic crush. I got sucked right in. You're bound to recognize your own plot of land, as well as your own suburban existence. And Dominique Browning is a gorgeous writer, with a great sense of humor. You don't need to know a thing about gardening to enjoy this terrific book.