Essential Earthman

<p>The most soul-satisfying gardening book in years. --<i>New York Times</i> (March 1982 reviewing the 1981 cloth edition from IU Press).<br /><br />Genuinely a classic . . . --<i>Los Angeles Times </i>(on the occasion of Houghton Mifflin's paperback edition which came out in 1994).<br /><br />Is there anyone alive with the slightest interest in gardening who doesn't know that Henry Mitchell is one of the funniest and most truthful garden columnists we've got? --Allen Lacy<br /><br />Mitchell is a joy to read. He has tried and failed persevered and triumphed and he has many sound recommendations for us fumblers and failures. --Celestine Sibley in the <i>Atlanta Constitution.</i><br /><br />Henry Mitchell is one of America's most entertaining and enlightening garden writers. . . . 'Garden writer' fails in truth to describe this man. He gardens and he writes--the former if we take him at his word with lust and loathing foolhardiness and finesse; the latter with gentle irony and consummate skill. --<i>Pacific Horticulture</i><br /><br />Mitchell mixes practical advice encouragement philosophic consolation and wit. He is the neighbor you wish you could talk to over the back fence. --<i>House and Garden</i><br /><br />Henry Mitchell was to gardening what Izaak Walton was to fishing. <i>The Essential Earthman</i> is a collection of the best of his long-running column for the Washington Post. Although he offered invaluable tips for novice as well as seasoned gardeners at the heart of his essays were piquant observations: on keeping records; the role of trees in gardens (they don't belong there); how a gardener should weather the winter; on shrubs bulbs and fragrant flowers--and about observation itself. Here's one example: Marigolds gain enormously in impact when used as sparingly as ultimatums. Henry Mitchell came to his subject with reverence passion humor and a contagious enthusiasm tempered only by his sober knowledge of human frailty. <i>The Essential Earthman</i> is for all who love gardening--even those who only dream of doing it.</p>