Barbara Damrosch: A Life in the Garden
One of America’s bestselling garden writers shares her reflections and advice on finding joy in the garden.
Save 20% on all of Barbara’s books with code: BARBARA
One of the nation’s most respected garden experts and writers, Barbara Damrosch is the author of the classic The Garden Primer and wrote a weekly column for The Washington Post called “A Cook’s Garden” for nearly 15 years. She appeared as a regular correspondent on the PBS series The Victory Garden and co-hosted the series Gardening Naturally for The Learning Channel.
Barbara is the co-owner, with her husband, Eliot Coleman, of Four Season Farm, an experimental market garden in Harborside, Maine, that is a nationally recognized model of small-scale sustainable agriculture.
“Drawing on a lifetime of organic gardening, Barbara Damrosch collects her lessons learned and wisdom gained into an easy-to-read-and-enjoy overview of kitchen gardening. For the new gardener, there is encouragement on top of nuts-and-bolts advice. For every gardener, there is inspiration to face the challenges inherent in a life deeply rooted in and fed from the garden.” —American Gardener
In A Life in the Garden, horticultural icon Barbara Damrosch imparts a lifetime of wisdom on growing food for herself and her family. In writing that’s accessible, engaging, and elegant, she welcomes us to garden alongside her. Personal, thoughtful, and often humorous, this book offers practical DIY insights that will delight gardeners, cooks, and small-scale farmers. With a personal and sometimes irreverent tone, Barbara expresses the pleasure she takes in gardening, the sense of empowerment she finds in it, and the importance of a partnership with the real expert: nature.
A leader in the edible gardening movement, Damrosch offers incomparable guidance on how to start a garden, soil fundamentals, design, proper tools, planting, maintenance, and of course, the best vegetables to grow.
Founder of Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine, Damrosch has spent decades sustainably growing food to feed her family and community. With her signature writing style that’s accessible, engaging, and sometimes even irreverent, Damrosch offers practical DIY insights that will delight gardeners, cooks, and small-scale farmers everywhere.
Damrosch calls her new book “a love story” that explores the ways her life has been enhanced by working with the natural world. Looking back over the decades she has spent in the garden, she poignantly says, “I’d like to share some of the knowledge that has made growing food such a pleasure for me—not just the techniques I’ve learned but also the mindset that it takes to learn them. It’s about giving up some control, and letting natural forces do much of the labor.”
Touching, inspiring, and utterly charming, A Life in the Garden is a must-read for anyone looking to cultivate food—or joy—in the garden.
To me, Barbara Damrosch is the Julia Child of gardening. She practically invented the edible gardening movement.
Phillis Odessey, The New York Botanical Garden, Plant Talk
Save 20% on all of Barbara’s books with code: BARBARA
“Drawing on a lifetime of organic gardening, Barbara Damrosch collects her lessons learned and wisdom gained into an easy-to-read-and-enjoy overview of kitchen gardening. For the new gardener, there is encouragement on top of nuts-and-bolts advice. For every gardener, there is inspiration to face the challenges inherent in a life deeply rooted in and fed from the garden.” —American Gardener
In A Life in the Garden, horticultural icon Barbara Damrosch imparts a lifetime of wisdom on growing food for herself and her family. In writing that’s accessible, engaging, and elegant, she welcomes us to garden alongside her. Personal, thoughtful, and often humorous, this book offers practical DIY insights that will delight gardeners, cooks, and small-scale farmers. With a personal and sometimes irreverent tone, Barbara expresses the pleasure she takes in gardening, the sense of empowerment she finds in it, and the importance of a partnership with the real expert: nature.
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Jam-packed with useful information, old-fashioned common sense, and a lifetime’s worth of experience, The Garden Primer is a classic, thoroughly revised and expanded to be 100% organic in its recommendations. Updated with the latest on plants, soils, techniques, and told, it includes: The basics of landscaping, emphasizing sustainable methods. Understanding what plants need and avoiding complex rules and formulas, How to choose and combine flowers for seaon-long color, orchestrating with perennials and accenting with annuals. Extending the season—that’s right, harvest carrots in January. The secret to raising roses without fuss, less demanding lawns, vines with discipline, and trees that will enhance your property. There is new information on native species, and all the gardening resources you need—explained in a voice that “has the snap of a snow pea and the spice of an old rose” (Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer). With more than 370 plant profiles, 500 illustrations, easy to-read diagrams & design plans for all types of gardens and landscapes.
“Barbara Damrosch delivers the goods.”—Chicago Tribune
“Best of the crop.”—House Beautiful
“Barbara Damrosch’s writing has the snap of a good snowpea and the spice of an old rose.”—The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
“Covers just about everything you could think of and then some.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“An extraordinarily comprehensive guide.” — The San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle
“Takes your soaring visions of garden splendor and plants them firmly in the ground.”—The Toronto Star
Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman are America’s foremost organic gardeners—and authorities. Barbara is the author of The Garden Primer, and Eliot wrote the bible for organic gardening, The New Organic Grower. Today they are the face of the locavore movement, working through their extraordinary Four Season Farm in Maine. And now they’ve written the book on how to grow what you eat, and cook what you grow.
The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook is two books in one. It’s a complete four-season cookbook with 120 recipes from Barbara, a master cook as well as master gardener, who shows how to maximize the fruits—and vegetables—of your labors, from Stuffed Squash Blossom Fritters to Red Thai Curry with Fall Vegetables to Hazelnut Torte with Summer Berries.
And it’s a step-by-step garden guide that works no matter how big or small your plot, with easy-to-follow instructions and plans for different gardens. It covers size of the garden, nourishing the soil, planning ahead, and the importance of rotating crops—yes, even in your backyard. And, at the core, individual instructions on the crops, from the hardy and healthful cabbage family to fourteen essential culinary herbs.
Eating doesn’t get any more local than your own backyard.
