Essential reading: Charlotte Mendelson's funny and relatable ode to growing your own
My review of 'Rhapsody in Green' - I’ve never read a book that so eloquently captures the endless optimism of the mediocre grower
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When it comes to gardening, books generally fall into one of two categories. First, you’ve got the How To guides. These are basically colourful textbooks packed with inspirational ideas and advice. The message is always the same: follow these steps and you will not fail. Mostly, we still do.
Taking over an allotment? You might try Charles Dowding’s ‘Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way’. Indoor growing more your thing? Maybe you’ve read ‘How Not To Kill Your Houseplant’ by Veronica Peerless. Or perhaps your particular circumstances mean you’re more in the market for Matthew Pottage’s ‘How To Garden When You Rent’. Whichever you choose, you will absorb thousands of words of irrefutably sensible advice, then put the book down, approach your plants, and kill everything anyway.
The other kind of book is the one that we read not to learn, but rather to indulge. To stimulate our soul and tickle our intellect. Here, prose reigns supreme. We’re talking your Richard Mabeys, your Christopher Lloyds, yes, even your Monty Dons.
What every book in each category has in common, however, is expertise. The authors are wise elders, or if young, then preternaturally knowledgeable. The sort of people whose mastery of botanical names is so fluent, they’d be scoring 2s and 3s in the Latin edition of Wordle.
It is very rare then, to come across a garden-based work of non-fiction that is written not just for, but by a true layperson. Someone who shares all of our passion for plants yet is equally inept at keeping them alive. Someone who pumps all of their spare time and energy into their garden – be it planning, planting, seed sowing, cuttings-taking or catalogue-browsing – and yet remains, by their own admission, a fairly rubbish gardener.
“Much of gardening is a lie, and the biggest of all involves courgettes… There is probably more nutrition in the seed packets, paper and all, than in the average amateur harvest.”
From Rhapsody in Green, by Charlotte Mendelson
Enter Charlotte Mendelson. You may already be familiar with Mendelson’s work. Best known as a Booker Prize-longlisted author of fiction, she is also the gardening correspondent for the New Yorker. First published in 2016, ‘Rhapsody in Green - a writer, an obsession, a laughably small excuse for a vegetable garden’ is Mendelson’s first (and to date only) non-fiction book. In it, she chronicles her relationship with gardening, from her first forays – a couple of poorly-planted pots on a tiny urban roof terrace – to the present-day epitome of her gardening prowess: quite a lot of poorly-planted pots in a tiny urban backyard.
The book is divided into chapters that follow and thematically reflect the seasons (Late Winter, Midsummer, etc), which are in turn subdivided into digestible vignettes. Her love of mulberries; her disdain for the colour purple; her urban “foraging” habits, which see her pluck ripe damsons from the trees of unsuspecting neighbours. And what shines through on every page is a helpless, borderline unhealthy obsession with her garden. Mendelson loves gardening, has read every book, has joined every forum, has memorised every seed catalogue, and in return the garden rewards her with blight, vine weevils, sickly seedlings and unproductive crops.
Which is why, even though Mendelson’s specific passion is not one that I share – namely growing obscure and horticulturally tricky vegetables – this is unquestionably the most relatable gardening book I have come across. This is a love letter, an ode, well, a rhapsody, and Mendelson’s language reflects this.
“The beds are being blanketed by expiring borage, immortal evergreen leaves, pock-marked kale and the damp sports socks which fall from my neighbour’s roof-terrace railing like spring rain.”
From Rhapsody in Green, by Charlotte Mendelson
Publishers of gardening books would have us believe that the titles on their lists are designed to inform, and to inspire. Only I tend not to find gardening manuals inspiring. In fact, I find them depressing. No, insulting; effectively a very long, very wordy way for the author to hold their thumb up to their nose and waggle their fingers in my face. “Na na na-na na, I’m the king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal (with a shade-swept plot and heavy clay soil.)
Mendelson, by contrast, does not set out to share her method, her tips and tricks, her pathway to success, but simply her rampant, evergreen love for growing. Her gift is in artfully combining elegant, evocative writing with a tone that is both thoughtful and self-deprecating. Oh, and laugh-out-loud funny. For Mendelson, the perpetual joy of gardening is not in the realisation of a magazine-worthy space, but in the futile pursuit of this impossible fantasy. And actually, I find that quite inspiring.
Have you read ‘Rhapsody in Green’? What did you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Likewise, if you have any thoughts or recommendations for other horticulturally-focussed books that I should be reading and/or reviewing, then comment away!
delightful review...and funny...never thought I'd enjoy reading about gardening!
On my ‘to buy’ list!