Between Gardens: Observations on Gardening, Friendship and Disability

Pleasance Crawford, a Canadian landscape and garden-history writer, is
the co-author of The Canadian Landscape and Garden History Directory and
Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing.

At the core of this touching and beautiful book are chronologically
arranged letters about gardens and life, written between June 1995 and
June 1996 by Carol Graham Chudley and Dorothy Field. Both were in their
50s, with supportive spouses and grown offspring; had been friends and
fellow craftspeople for more than two decades; and had become neighbors
on Vancouver Island in 1988. When Chudley, a talented potter, suggested
that they exchange letters on gardening, she had been suffering from
chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) for about 15 years and had already had to
give up ceramics. During the year of writing these letters, she was
struggling to focus her increasingly limited periods of energy on
gardening, which she had loved since childhood, and writing, which she
often did at night when unable to sleep. Her idea had originally been to
create a book of gardening tips. The correspondence ranged in unexpected
directions, however, and was soon giving voice to each writer’s
thoughts about living with nature, growing or losing favorite plants,
and dealing with insect pests, neighbors’ dogs, spouses, children,
disease, disability, and death.

The reader learns from Field’s preface that the book was published
after Chudley’s death in 1998. Chudley is represented not only by her
remarkably bright and optimistic letters but also by extracts from the
journal—found after she died—in which she recorded much darker
feelings about the progress of her illness and the seeming disinterest
or disbelief of doctors and other health practitioners.

Field’s equally significant contributions include her well-written
preface, letters, afterword, and—illuminating every second spread of
pages—color reproductions of her intriguing handmade papers and
intimate plant photographs. Carol’s husband Ron Chudley also
contributes an afterword, which begins, “Carol’s great love was
gardening, her abiding passion the making of pottery.” The last two
images in the book are of pots into which Carol had pressed some of the
field flowers that she also nurtured as part of her garden.

The thorough integration of text and color graphics enhances the
thoughtful, often metaphorical, observations found throughout
Chudley’s “letter chats” and Fields’s “paper conversations.”
This book deserves and rewards an unhurried reading, with frequent
pauses to reflect on one’s own ideas about gardening, friendship, and
disability.