An Iowa Garden

On a day so cold that , as I look out the windows, I can see tiny ice crystals forming out of the thin air, causing a million little sparkles as the sun rises over the snow-filled valley below, I've pulled a book out of my library to read in front of the fireplace. In this case, the book is an old friend, for it is Henry Mitchell's, One Man's Garden, the first garden book I ever bought, and I could not have made a better choice to start my garden library. If you don't know of Henry Mitchell's books, you are in for a treat. A fellow writer, Allen Lacy, who might well be our premier living garden writer, has called Henry Mitchell the best garden writer America has ever had (Henry Mitchell died rather young, in 1993 at age 68, of colon cancer). Mitchell's four books (two published posthumously) are all collections of his columns written for the Washington Post, and most deal with his everyday triumphs and tribulations in his home garden, on a long, narrow city lot jam-packed with plants, a small pond, and various garden ornaments and whatnots. Reading his books is like walking about your most delightful friend's garden, with a cup of coffee, listening to him ramble on about everything you come upon. I have a smile on my face all through reading his books. I was quite delighted to recently come upon a web site put together by a Mitchell fan, David Neumeyer, which shows some pictures from Henry's home garden, and it was just as I pictured it from his books; an absolute jumble of flowers and shrubs, with a tightly-packed bed of beautifully grown irises, and a garden pond that looks as if it was discovered in some overgrown, abandoned southern garden, rather than being in the middle of a small city lot in Washington D.C.
It has always struck me as odd (and unfortunate) that it seems as if our very best garden writers invariably publish only a handful of books; they write just enough to get you hooked, and then they are gone. It may be that part of the problem is that garden writing usually comes to people later in life; it takes many years to get your garden to the point where you feel you have something to say, and can take time to write about it rather than always having a shovel in your hand. I prefer not to think about an alternative, that garden writers may unaccountably die young.
Henry Mitchell Website