Product Description

Cultivation of the soil meets cultivation of the soul in this refreshing approach to personal growth by the author of The Tao of Inner Peace. By combining practical gardening advice, personal narrative, and lessons in spiritual practice, Diane Dreher offers anyone who wants a more serene, balanced life a nurturing volume of the gentle, perceptive self-help that has endeared her books to thousands.

Inner Gardening was written for the gardener in all of us and unites inspiration with gardening advice and wisdom, insights from medieval and Renaissance poets and philosophers, as well as the author's own gardening experiences.

Divided into four seasons, the book takes readers on a journey of renewal throughout the year. New gardeners will find a monthly set of gardening tasks, including useful information about soil, mulching, composting, planning, pest control, and plant care. More experienced gardeners will gain new knowledge of garden history and learn how seasonal cycles and garden tasks echo centuries of tradition. Each chapter then segues into "Gardening as Spiritual Practice," offering personal exercises for self-cultivation: planting seeds of ideas and dreams, weeding out bad habits and unfulfilling tasks, designing new challenges one step at a time, and more.

Brimming with life-enhancing strategies for garden and gardener alike, Inner Gardening affirms what everyone who has ever planted a seed and watched it grow knows: what we cultivate around us, we also cultivate within.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1615738 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-01
• Released on: 2001-05-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this resolutely optimistic, self-help-meets-how-to manual, Dreher, author of The Tao of Inner Peace and professor of Renaissance literature at Santa Clara University, offers a month-by-month guide to gardening as a spiritual pursuit, in which hands-on garden advice provides the grist for a metaphor-driven, checklist approach to "inner" growth and cultivation. (Notes on weeding the flowerbed meander into prescriptive musings on "weeding" the "unwelcome intruders" and "unproductive activities" from one's life.) Dreher neglects the ways in which gardening can itself be trying requiring the gardener to stare down rot and death on a daily basis, placing physical strain on body, wallet and even land. More irritatingly, she takes a finger-wagging tone toward much of contemporary culture and offers wistful (and ahistorical) glances at the medieval and early modern world, which she idealizes as having allowed the "natural" and "simple" to flourish. Still, this book offers some delights: a cache of agreeable quotations, charming historical and literary anecdotes (Adam's naming of plants in Milton's Paradise Lost), useful instructions on such tasks as double-digging and tips on how to make a compost heap more productive (toss in a box of energetic earthworms). More successful on the firm terrain of practical counsel for the gardener and as a pastiche of garden trivia, this book falters when striving to offer guidance on self-transformation. (June)Forecast: Dreher's Tao of Inner Peace sold more than 150,000 copies in trade paperback; this one has the potential to reach those readers as well as those who are seeking to cultivate their gardens as well as their souls.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"... to feel the magic of gardening, and discover a new path to your own garden within, read this beautiful book." -- --Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., author of Conscious Living and - with Kathlyn Hendricks - Conscious Loving

"It's a beautiful, clear book that shows how the simplest acts of pruning,cultivation, harvesting, and renewal can be used for ... -- --Jerry Lynch, Ph.D., sports psychologist and author of Thinking Body, Dancing Mind and Running Within

"It's a beautiful, clear book that shows how the simplest acts of pruning,cultivation, harvesting, and renewal can be used for ... -- --Jerry Lynch, Ph.D., sports psychologist and author of Thinking Body, Dancing Mind and Running Within

From the Author
From the author, Diane Dreher:
I wrote Inner Gardening for the gardener in all of us, blending practical gardening advice with personal narrative, self-help insights, and perennial garden wisdom. Seasonal feasts and saint's days, plant histories, herbal lore, and garden quotes from Medieval and Renaissance poets take readers through the garden year and back to earlier times when gardening was a metaphor for self-cultivation and spiritual growth. The twelve main chapters of the book span the twelve months of the garden year, in a cycle of growth and renewal leading from the new beginnings of early spring to the warm profusion of summer, the golden harvest of autumn, the quiet wisdom of winter, and the promise of another spring.

New gardeners will find seasonal checklists and helpful information about soils, planning, and plant care they can use in their own gardens. More experienced gardeners will gain a new kinship with garden history, realizing how the tasks in their gardens today echo centuries of liturgical and agrarian tradition. Blending poetry, practical advice, and personal narrative, the book affirms what everyone knows who has ever planted a seed and watched it grow: what we cultivate around us, we also cultivate within us. Relieving stress and bringing us back to ourselves, our gardens provide us with harvests of more than fruits and flowers. They can bring us a deep sense of peace, inspiration, and personal renewal. It is my hope that Inner Gardening will serve as a helpful guide for readers as they cultivate their own gardens--within and around them.

Customer Reviews

A profound multidisciplinary collection
INNER GARDENING is a remarkable book in a number of ways. First of all, Diane Dreher's work addresses the whole reader in a way other books cannot because of their self-imposed limitations of scope. INNER GARDENING is a book full of interesting useful information on cultivating one's land. So, it is good for the VICTORY GARDEN crowd. It is also an insightful original piece of scholarship concerned with themes of nature in Western and Eastern cultures. So, it is right up the alley of someone who reads Rebecca Bushnell. Most important to me, the book communicates meaning through its own organizational structure. The collection begins and ends in the springtime. I was pleasantly surprised at how clearly Dreher writes on the topics of origins and fruitions. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.

A Beautiful Patch Work Quilt
"Inner Gardening" is like a beautiful patch work quilt. Dr. Dreher weaves together her considerable learning about gardening, Eastern philosophy, Renaissance history and literature into an inspirational book that you will consult over and over again. Each chapter corresponds to a month of the year with detailed instructions on specific gardening tasks. The author then reflects on the inner meaning of these tasks and how the disciplined performance of them contributes to a richer life. I highly recommend it to you.

Review of Inner Gardening
I'm new to gardening and I found this book interesting. There are many different reasons why I'm interested in gardening. I like the plants but more importantly I wanted to garden myself. I wanted to grow something inside. The author bridges these two types of gardening nicely. She infuses the chapters with a variety of different angles on gardening. In some sections she brings in the botanical view. There's also the historical folklore perspective. She encourages risk and self-exploration by communicating some of the her own experiences in Aikido as well as her thoughts when she's gardening. Then there's, for lack of a better term, the self-workbook questions. For example pg 98 - "Something is always growing in our gardens, whether we cultivate it or not." Similar to The Artists Way, the author asks the reader to explore their life. I don't think the psychological and spiritual benefits of gardening would be so valued in our culture if the activity weren't time tested. At the same time, readers need coaching to uncover or find their ways. The author guides the reader by asking them to reflect on their lives. These questions encouraged me to start gardening and exploring within my own life as well. I encourage others to pick up this book and begin growing new ideas within the soil of their own minds. I would recommend the book to many because it's multidimensional and it challenges me to grow.