Onward and Upward in the Garden

“White describes her gardening habits as ‘careless,’ ‘lazy,’ and ‘amateur,’ but the critical eye and exacting taste that come through in her collected gardening columns for The New Yorker are a delight…Her opinions about bearded irises and gourds, dahlias and gladioli are all expressed with such humor and charisma…” —Chelsea Leu, The Atlantic

“Her writing is so wonderfully clear, so intimate…she leaves you wanting to know her thoughts of every aspect of the garden.” —Jamaica Kincaid
 
“Onward and Upward in the Garden is quite a bit more than a book about flowers. It is itself a bouquet, the final blooming of an extraordinary sensibility.” —The New York Times

“You don’t have to be a gardener to love this collection of essays. White observes that a talent for the soil and a taste for writing and editorializing often go together, and she proves it—creating her own distinctive voice in the process.” —Newsweek
 
“[This collection] can be savored by the reader whose closest acquaintance with nature is the corner florist. It is a heady compost of observation, taste, wit, and scholarship.” —Time
 
“A special joy for persons of cultivation, be they connoisseurs of grandiflora or mere backyard tomato growers.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“A charming, idiosyncratic, opinionated, informative and, at times, humorous paean to the amateur pursuit of horticulture….it is the controlled discursiveness of the writing that keeps us reading, even if we don’t necessarily care about varieties of roses or the care and breeding of African violets. White reels us in with her enthusiasm and her Yankee directness. When she takes a narrative side trip through the history of the lawn mower or contemplates keeping the -virus-ridden bulbs of ‘broken tulips’ segregated in her flowerbeds, we find ourselves eagerly reading on—whether we have a lawn ourselves or give two figs about tulips….Katharine White was indeed a delightfully gifted writer.” —Robert Weibezahl, BookPage

“White’s critiques were quirky and precise, reflecting not only her preferences as a gardener, but her contention that these catalogs formed a literary genre of their own, their authors as singular as Hemingway or Faulkner. Looking back a half-century later, one finds White’s views alternately quaint, witty, sage – and surprisingly current…Notable throughout was her breadth of research, boundless curiosity and her candor. Yet the charm of these essays and their staying power derive from White herself.” —Joan Silverman, Portland Press Herald