The Garden Letters

Pleasance Crawford is a Canadian landscape and garden-history researcher
and writer and the co-author of Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian
Garden Writing.

This charming book begins with Elspeth Bradbury’s first letter back to
her friend, Judy Maddocks, in Hampton, New Brunswick, following the
Bradburys’ cross-country move to the Vancouver area. Maddocks replies
within a fortnight, and the two are launched on a warm and caring
exchange of lively, informative, and often humorous reports of progress
and setbacks in their respective gardens, interspersed with interesting
anecdotes about themselves, their families, mutual acquaintances, and
new neighbors. The book closes 28 months later, as the two former
neighbors look forward to Bradbury’s first visit back east.

Bradbury and Maddocks are previously published authors. Their carefully
composed letters, although perhaps not initially intended for
publication, flow easily in this engaging book, many of whose pages are
illustrated with their drawings. And both are knowledgable gardeners.
Unfortunately, because their book is unindexed, the wealth of
horticultural observation and advice that they share with one another is
not readily retrieved.