Of Leaf and Flower
Stories and Poems for Gardeners
Charles Dean and Clyde Wachsberger (Editors)
with Illustrations by Clyde Wachsberger       

Winner of the 2002 Garden Writers Association of America's Garden Globe Award for Illustration.

A literary anthology that summons up the profound passions and wild obsessions of gardening. The answers to many gardening questions can be found in how-to manuals and essays, but who can fathom the passions behind the obsession? Why do we get down on our hands and knees in the mud in March or return to the garden for one last look before dark? Only the storytellers and poets can tell us.
The twelve short stories and twelve poems collected here celebrate the irresistible emotions that plants inspire.

Included are Mary Austin, H.E Bates, Kate Chopin, Amy Clampitt, Eugenia Collier, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Robert Frost, Robert Graves, O. Henry, Josephine Jacobsen, Sarah Orne Jewett, Howard Nemerov, Sylvia Plath, Kathleen Raine, Christopher Reid, William Saroyan, Saki, James Schuyler, John Updike, Arturo Vivante, Alice Walker, William Carlos Williams, and Cynthia Zarin.

Twelve elegant black-and-white sumi paintings of plants by Clyde Wachsberger enhance the collection. There is no better way to cultivate a gardener’s passions during the long winter months than through this beautiful and moving book.

Hardcover / $21.95 (Can $32.99) / ISBN 978-0-89255-269-6 / 182 pages / Gardening