Our Gardens, Ourselves: Reflections on an Ancient Art

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Former Harrowsmith gardening editor Jennifer Bennett recently changed
homes, and gardens. The move gave her a new slant on a garden with
“lovely imperfections ..., this interplay of light and air, water,
earth and plants, this chorus of many parts, all in a shifting
counterpoint harmony.” The writer is part poet, part philosopher, and
part gardener. Her reflections on nature and the growing process are
illuminated by tiny black-and-white drawings of plants and quotations
from various writers over the centuries. These include Annie Dillard,
Timothy Findley, Jane Eyre, and Isaiah.

Bennett’s chapters have titles like “On Light,” “On Air,”
“On Warmth,” “On Stone,” “On Paths,” and “On Walls.” An
impressive eight-page bibliography is arranged by topic to match the
chapters. There is also an index.

Our Gardens, Ourselves (with a title punning neatly on Our Bodies,
Ourselves, from a feminist collective in Boston) is a book for all
seasons, one worthy of its subtitle and well worth a permanent place on
library shelves.