TWO GARDENERS

Letters between the famous New Yorker editor and a distinguished southern garden-writer chronicle their friendship, as well as the joys and travails of gardening.

The correspondence begins in May 1958, when Lawrence writes to congratulate White on her New Yorker essay “A Romp in the Catalogues,” and ends with White’s death in 1977. Lawrence, who lived with her mother in Charlotte, North Carolina, wrote a weekly column for the Charlotte Observer, had published several well-received books, including A Southern Garden, and also designed gardens. White, recently relocated to Maine with husband E.B. White, continued to edit and write for the New Yorker but now had more time to garden and to maintain a correspondence (though illness, travel, and work cause some breaks in the flow here). The two became friends through their letters, meeting only once in 1967. In the correspondence, they commiserate with and encourage each other in writing and gardening projects. White, thanking Lawrence for a copy of her book The Little Bulbs, hopes it will expand her collection of bulbs; she notes in 1959 that she picked roses until the end of November; she details catalogues she receives and tells Lawrence, “I am with you in detesting most garden books and their sentimentality or their jokes.” Lawrence writes that she is “ the most casual gardener. . . . When things get sick I destroy them”; she gives her opinion of Gertrude Jekyll (“best book is Home and Garden”); and describes her long search to find out who or what Ornithogalum balansae was named for—without the capitalization, she wasn’t sure whether balansa “was a place or a person.” Their delight in gardening is increasingly circumscribed by their physical condition: White suffers a series of debilitating illnesses; Lawrence must take care of her bedridden mother and then suffers from painful arthritis.

A splendid, moving collection memorably celebrating two remarkable women's shared affection for the making and tending of gardens.