Letting nature take its course

Suzy Bales’ Down-to-Earth Gardener

Suzy Bales

Rodale, $32.50

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True to her subtitle, “Let Nature Guide You to Success in Your Garden,” this author uses no poisons, owns and operates her own dump truck and gets, literally, close to the ground.

There she contemplates the “scandalous” interbreeding of Johnny-jump-ups and pansies, the shiny trail of a snail and the ever-changing nature of the garden.

Though Bales’ six-acre Long Island landscape knows plants and seasons we know not of, her passions are familiar. In friendly prose, she relates what real gardeners sense and do: the delights of weeding and the scent of a rose, the power of self-seeders, or how best to gather seed. She walks and talks us through her flower-filled kitchen garden, the formal gardens where straight edges are allowed to fade, a flagstone courtyard where sunflowers rise from the cracks and the “shrinking lawn” now studded with bulbs.

Stunning photos and lively graphics underscore wisdom gleaned from 30 years of practice, such as “a gardener, like a seamstress, has to specialize in alterations.” The last chapter, “Gardening Up,” describes vines and vertical gardening -- with her ground planted, this avid gardener had nowhere else to go.

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Lili Singer