cover image Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener

Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener

Laura Simon. Crown Publishers, $23 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-609-60097-9

Simon's imaginary correspondence with Thomas Jefferson about her horticultural efforts on Nantucket, where she has lived for the past 25 years, is a diverting hybrid just right for gardeners interested in history and historians interested in gardening. Whether telling Jefferson about her own life or sharing her thoughts about seed propagation, garden design and heirloom vegetables, Simon does a terrific job of replicating the pleasures of 18th-century epistolary prose, an elegant language that sports lively digressions and tangents. Though the correspondence is one-sided, readers gain an appreciation for Jefferson, a passionate gardener himself, through tidbits about his plantation at Monticello and well-placed quotes from his diaries and letters. Much of the entertainment comes from Simon's attempts to update the founding father on the evolution not only of horticulture but of American civilization: ""In the supermarket we were able to give full expression to another national trait. Our admiration of hugeness.... You could slide Monticello between the dairy cases and the dog food aisle of the average Stop & Shop."" She offers bracingly opinionated comments about topics such as daffodil breeding: ""I like pink flowers even more than I don't like yellow ones, but pink has no business intruding on daffodil territory."" Filled with quirky facts from gardening's vast history, as well as updates on progress in Simon's own backyard, this is the mature fruit of a well-seasoned gardener, an engaging work that deserves a spot of honor on every gardener's nightstand. (Mar.)