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Notes from the Garden: Creating a Pacific Northwest Sanctuary

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I know from my own experience that an evening spent tending my garden, after another incomprehensible day, brings a strength and calmness that no other activity can match. Is it the qualities associated with gardening, such as nurturing and the hard work of hands and heart, that are deficient in our culture? Much good writing has been done about the garden as a special place.  Madeleine Wilde's woodland garden on the south slope of Seattle's Queen Anne Hill was more than a "special place." It was her Sanctuary, her prism through which she explored the world and accomplished "much good writing."
For two decades, starting in the early 1990s, Madeleine's "Notes from the Garden" delighted readers of the Queen Anne & Magnolia News in Seattle. Here, in luminous prose, is the best of her work from those years, ranging from hands-on advice for gardeners and would-be gardeners to poetically charged, often wry, insights into life in the tradition of Thoreau.
Madeleine, who died in 2018, has left us a book to savor from solstice to solstice. This is a book that gardeners and lovers of cooking, food and life well-lived will savor. It will also inspire fans of the personal essay and those interested in the cycle of the seasons and intentional living. The book is edited by her former publisher, Mike Dillon, illustrated with charming drawings by noted American architect and author Mark Hinshaw, and a foreword by Madeleine's husband David Streatfield, professor emeritus in the department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington.

242 pages, Paperback

Published October 26, 2021

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Profile Image for Bonnie Westmark.
647 reviews9 followers
March 30, 2022
This has been my favorite gardening book ever. I live in Washington state, so everything she described I could relate to. I miss gardening columns. While reading her book, I felt as though I were a friend in her garden. Like my garden, this book was a refuge, a peaceful sanctuary. It inspired me to get out there and plant some bulbs!
Profile Image for Kelsey.
15 reviews
July 18, 2023
I think I need to keep this as a reference book!
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