Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1078227 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-16
• Released on: 2002-04-16
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.25 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 296 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1958 White, wife of the essayist E.B. White, published the first of many horticultural articles in the New Yorker, where she had been an editor for years. It was a critique of the catalogues from which she ordered seeds, bulbs and plants for the gardens around her house in North Brooklin, Maine. It prompted Lawrence, a noted garden writer in Charlotte, N.C., to send a fan letter recommending other catalogues for the author to look into. White gratefully wrote back, and thus began a friendship by mail that lasted until White's death in 1977. Because White often asked for advice about books, catalogues and plants, there is a good deal of gardening information in these 160 letters. Mutual encouragement is a major theme. White praises Lawrence's books, Southern Gardening and The Little Bulb Book, and in her last letter claims to have learned almost everything she knows about horticulture from Lawrence. Though somewhat in awe of the older, more famous woman, Lawrence doesn't hesitate to act as her teacher. Mixed in are accounts of their daily lives, bits of family history and news of Lawrence's aged mother and White's grandchildren. These graceful letters by two women well-known in the gardening world are a joy to read. The book is nicely assembled by Wilson (Hope and Dignity: Older Black Women of the South), whose footnotes are informative but unobtrusive. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Who knows why or how friendships develop? What fate brings together two kindred spirits? In the case of White and Lawrence, it was a letter, one that launched two decades of correspondence between two extraordinary women that blossomed over time from cordial, professional camaraderie into real and abiding affection. In 1958, White, a garden columnist and editor for The New Yorker, and Lawrence, a garden columnist for the Charlotte Observer, began a relationship based on mutual admiration, support, and respect that evolved steadily into as caring a friendship as one in which neighbors meet daily to swap gardening tips and share treasured plants across a backyard fence. Remarkably, they would meet face-to-face only once during their 20-year correspondence. Capturing the true essence of how to be a gardener and what it means to be a friend, their letters, here lovingly collected and eloquently introduced by editor Emily Herring Wilson, offer an intimate portrait of two accomplished women whose contribution to garden literature transcends their professionally published work. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
What a pleasure it is to rediscover Katharine White and Elizabeth Lawrence through their singular correspondence. (One even gets a bonus glimpse of Katharine's husband and great love, E. B. White-another letter writer to be reckoned with.) In this 'private garden,' writes Emily Wilson in her graceful introduction, an epistolary friendship grew, and helped sustain two uncommon women for nearly twenty years. To read their letters is to be admitted into the company of two people worth knowing, to enter a more civilized time, before e-mail. For this lovely book Emily Herring Wilson deserves a big bouquet.--Linda H. Davis, author of Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White

"This is an entrancing book documenting the friendship of two supremely civilized and talented women. It may end up on the gardening shelf in bookstores, where it will instruct garden lovers of all ages. But like all great literary correspondence, it touches and illuminates many aspects of life." --Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain and True North

"Emily Wilson has given us two remarkable women writers whose friendship is explored through the lens of their mutual passion for gardening. Lawrence and White are two quite different gardeners who nurture each other's souls as well as their border perennials. Two Gardeners is a fascinating glimpse of the writing life through the enrichment of the soil and the spirit."--Linda Lear, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

"It comes as a great but wonderful surprise to learn that over 150 letters were exchanged over a period of more than two decades between Katharine S. White, one of America's finest editors, and Elizabeth Lawrence, one of our very best gardening writers. It's even better to discover that these letters have survived and have been edited with loving care by Emily Herring Wilson. This spirited and revealing correspondence illumines our understanding of American gardening and garden writing in the second half of the twentieth century. This book is a classic, no less than Mrs. White's magnificent Onward and Upward in the Garden and Miss Lawrence's Gardening for Love and A Southern Garden."--Allen Lacy, author of A Year in Our Gardens

"Two Gardeners is one of the finest gardening books published in years, largely because it reveals as much about the character of these two remarkable women as it does about the plants they loved."--Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review

"If you are feeling frantic about all those weeds growing in your garden, as well as some impossible workload, you might take to your hammock for a day with Two Gardeners. The break will do you good and so will reading about two other extremely harried women, deadline-driven writers and devoted gardeners." --Anne Raver, The New York Times

"In 1958, Katharine S. White, an editor at this magazine and the wife of E. B. White, began writing a gardening column, which appeared intermittently, like lady's slippers, under the heading 'Onward and Upward in the Garden,' until 1970. The first essay prompted a fan letter from the distinguished Southern gardener Elizabeth Lawrence, who wrote a weekly column for The Charlotte Observer. In more than a hundred and fifty letters, they discussed subjects ranging from bloom times in their respective zones to meetings with cantankerous plantsmen, their burgeoning families, and, as time passed, the vicissitudes of old age. Those unfamiliar with Lawrence will be glad to meet her; for fans of the Whites, to hear once more about doings in North Brooklin, Maine, is akin to a visitation."
-The New Yorker

"Too often we head to the garden center on Saturday morning, load up on plants and call it gardening. Better to experience true garden drama with Two Gardeners."
-Newsweek

"Savor it; read it slowly if you can, because it will be a long time before such a treasure surfaces again." --Amy Stewart, San Francisco Chronicle

"If you haven't dropped a line to your green-thumbed pen pal recently, you will after reading this delightful book." --Stephanie Saulmon, Garden Design