Review
The memories read like heart-warming short stories, the characters real enough to be those in your life. ...it's easy to imagine being the teen in hand-me-down denim peering at a bumpy white cauliflower in Uncle Frank's garden. And to appreciate how morning glories made friends for life. -- Kathy Huber, Houston Chronicle/San Antonio Express-News
Mentors is homage to the gardeners who have made an impression on the author over the years. In another sense, it's a deeply personal memoir about the intertwined lessons of life and gardening. On a third level, it's a snapshot of bygone America. -- Will Rowlands, Connecticut Gardener
In her memoir Mentors in the Garden of Life, Colleen Plimpton traces her development as a person and a gardener to a childhood spent on a farm in upstate New York . The countryside surrounding Rochester provides the setting in which we meet stern grandparents, a loving great aunt, and a young uncle, whose premature death made a deep impression upon his niece. Thus, Colleen learned early the importance of realizing life while we live it, the message of Thornton Wilder s play Our Town, and she became a keen observer of everything around her. What attracted her attention most were the plants, wild and cultivated, and she has been paying attention to them ever since. Learning lessons along the way from both plants and people, she writes about these encounters with touching affection. --Sydney Eddison, Gardening for a Lifetime; How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older
My taste in gardening books normally runs to reference works like those from Michael Dirr or The American Horticultural Society. But this one from Colleen Plimpton may just change my reading habits. I found myself positively captured by her descriptions of family life in rural upstate New York . "Go outside to play" had an entirely different meaning to me, a city mouse. Yet Colleen's word pictures and descriptions put me precisely in the same places she described: climbing trees, finding cow bones, and fishing in the local creek. After reading this book I now feel that I've somehow had the experience of growing up on a farm. This is a heartwarming and pleasurable read that you'll find yourself going back to for the lessons it subtly and gently conveys. Colleen's clear writing style and sense of peace are strong magnets for anyone who enjoys digging in the dirt. --Lorraine Ballato, garden writer and author of Successful Self-Watering Containers
Mentors is different from any gardening book I have read. The pages are filled with people who coloured Colleen's life with the love of gardening... This is an exceptional book. If you read it, you will remember. More importantly, you will mentor. --Dan Clost, book reviewer, Quinte West EMC, Ontario, Canada
Colleen has written an autobiography of herself as a social worker, a gardener, a friend, a daughter-mother-wife, a mentor, and someone you feel you have known for years... Buy it for yourself and someone else who loves plants as much as we who see our friends and families in the faces of our flowers.-- Molly Day, blog, All the Dirt on Gardening
Mentors is homage to the gardeners who have made an impression on the author over the years. In another sense, it's a deeply personal memoir about the intertwined lessons of life and gardening. On a third level, it's a snapshot of bygone America. -- Will Rowlands, Connecticut Gardener
In her memoir Mentors in the Garden of Life, Colleen Plimpton traces her development as a person and a gardener to a childhood spent on a farm in upstate New York . The countryside surrounding Rochester provides the setting in which we meet stern grandparents, a loving great aunt, and a young uncle, whose premature death made a deep impression upon his niece. Thus, Colleen learned early the importance of realizing life while we live it, the message of Thornton Wilder s play Our Town, and she became a keen observer of everything around her. What attracted her attention most were the plants, wild and cultivated, and she has been paying attention to them ever since. Learning lessons along the way from both plants and people, she writes about these encounters with touching affection. --Sydney Eddison, Gardening for a Lifetime; How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older
My taste in gardening books normally runs to reference works like those from Michael Dirr or The American Horticultural Society. But this one from Colleen Plimpton may just change my reading habits. I found myself positively captured by her descriptions of family life in rural upstate New York . "Go outside to play" had an entirely different meaning to me, a city mouse. Yet Colleen's word pictures and descriptions put me precisely in the same places she described: climbing trees, finding cow bones, and fishing in the local creek. After reading this book I now feel that I've somehow had the experience of growing up on a farm. This is a heartwarming and pleasurable read that you'll find yourself going back to for the lessons it subtly and gently conveys. Colleen's clear writing style and sense of peace are strong magnets for anyone who enjoys digging in the dirt. --Lorraine Ballato, garden writer and author of Successful Self-Watering Containers
Product Description
Colleen Plimpton's beautifully written memoir, Mentors in the Garden of Life, is a poignant and spiritual look at how gardening can improve one's life by being close to the land. It is a must read for anyone interested in gardening and spirituality.
Ms. Plimpton is a highly-acclaimed author, gardener, lecturer, and instructor. Her award-winning one-acre garden has been on numerous tours, and serves as a living classroom laboratory where she teaches composting, composition, color and many other how-to's of gardening. She volunteers her time and expertise to the local garden club and other non-profit groups.
Ms. Plimpton is a highly-acclaimed author, gardener, lecturer, and instructor. Her award-winning one-acre garden has been on numerous tours, and serves as a living classroom laboratory where she teaches composting, composition, color and many other how-to's of gardening. She volunteers her time and expertise to the local garden club and other non-profit groups.
