One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place

Looking back at it, I'm not sure what I expected of this book, but a little more than it delivered. Certainly more than its cover, format, and publicity suggest.In it, the writers trace the creation and evolution of the Welty garden and put the design into the context of the early twentieth century. Using various resources, they suggest some of the meanings and values the garden had both for Eudora and her mother, Chestine Welty, who created it. The photographs are beautiful as well as ample, with most of the photographed plants identified properly. The writers also point out certain plants and descriptions of plants that appear both in Welty's fiction and personal writing.Yet when I had finished this book, I found myself a little puzzled. I felt I had read through several different books--the history of a modest garden, the gardeners' attitude toward it and one another, the story of a possible love affair that did not work out, the role of gardens in the early 20th century, and lots more. I had no central insights into the uniqueness of the gardeners or the influence of the garden on the writer's work. The authors depended on chronology as an organizing device and at times seemed uncertain of their task. Was it to report the history of a garden? Or---as the title certainly suggests---was it to show a gardener's relationship to her garden and to suggest what that relationship revealed about her and finally her work? In a word, this book lacks focus.The Welty garden is a simple garden, interesting primarily because it belonged to the writer Eudora Welty. Designed by her mother, then modified by her own interests in plants like camellias, it is finally modest, certainly by this day's gardening standards. When the writers have had their go at it, it appears to have little distinctive about it.Yet every garden that is the product of a gardener, not some anonymous design firm, is distinctive. The maker's choice of plants is either conventional or idiosyncratic, driven by personal preferences and needs, reflecting a worldview that extends beyond the garden gate. For instance, I immediately noted that Welty the gardener was far more interested in plants than in design. She learned to root and graft plants. She brought back cuttings from her WPA documentation trips around the state, begged plants from the yards of country gardeners who continued to nurture and propagate old species and varieties. She dug native plants from the countryside without serious twinges of conscience. She observed that little country towns all over Mississippi were characterized by different varieties of camellias that grew there, local plants having been disseminated from cuttings of a common parent plant, and she smiled that she was assembling them all in one place. Passalongs.And she participates in that tradition. While Welty corresponded with sophisticated gardeners like Elizabeth Lawrence and sometimes ordered from regional nurseries, she seems to have been far more interested in the old-fashioned passalong plants that were staples in Southern gardens than in newer varieties that were more floriferous or that had larger blooms. Her choices deserved attention. In her writing, Welty often uses gardens as characterizing devices, reflections of their makers' personalities and station. I think the authors of this book would have done well to have paid more careful attention to the practice of the writer whose garden they purported to study.Anyone who reads her stories recognizes immediately that Welty uses plants and garden design to do more than establish place. That Sister demands the fern and pulls up some of the four-o'clocks from the star-shaped bed in front of the house when she moves her residence to the Post Office in "Why I Live at the P.O." or that she immediately installs there strings on which beans and morning glories might run reveals a lot about Sister and the world in which she lived. That she knows she can tantalize her mother by mentiioning the mail order offer of "1000 seed, no two alike" tells a lot about both mother and daughter. Throughout Welty's work, one sees her use gardening not only in metaphor, although plants provide some of her finest metaphors. A book this size and on this subject should have sought more assiduously to find the gardener in the garden .That is not to say the book is bad. Those who love Welty's work will find things of interest in it and will draw conclusions about her practices on their own. The writers have also used newly available letters and photographs. I enjoyed my ramble through this book and I was glad to learn more specifically about some of the plants Welty grew, but I felt the book needed the hand of a strong editor.In my view, this book would have benefited from more focus, more exploration and more insight.

Wonderful big picture book of Eudora Welty's garden. Welty actually referred to the garden as her Mother's garden. Of particular interest are pictures of the gardens restoration. The writer of the book was also involved in the restoration which was started in the writer's lifetime.

I recently received this book. It was in very good condition, rather large, and filled with gorgeous pictures of the gardens now that they've been restored. This is a well written book. If you are a gardener, and a writer, you will love the book.

This book would make a good coffee table book as it is a most attractive book. It is well written and you remember the little facts about who did what in the garden. "The man pruning the sticky roses and said he wished there weren't any roses in the whole wide world".

Just a beautiful book. I've read some of her writing and didn't realize that she was a gardener. Very interesting book for those who enjoy gardening & reading.

This is a marvelous book...a cross between a lush coffee table tome and a fascinating, historically accurate history of a century of american gardening....all centered on an iconic figure in southern literature. The story, and the writing, are worthy of Eudora Welty. Fascinating, charming, heart felt. A rare and wonderful book.

What a great book, couldn't wait to share it with friends who are also Eudora Welty admirers

This is a fascinating history, well illustrated with historic photos as well as images of the garden in its current, beautiful state. This volume deserves a place alongside "The Orchard: A Memoir" by Theresa Weir, on any bookshelf! The best garden book I have read in a long, long time.