Gardening at Ginger: My Seven-Year Obsession with Designing and Planting a Personal Landscape

Seven years ago, James Raimes and his wife bought a country home on nine acres in upstate New York. In the tradition of their family, who once owned a cottage named Fred, this larger property became "Ginger." Inspired by the natural beauty of the land and a desire to learn how to be a gardener, Raimes found himself obsessed with such questions as why gardeners keep moving plants around, what the names of the lawn grasses are, and how one can impose order in a garden and at the same time make it look natural. What, in fact, defines a garden?

Gardening at Ginger is full of successes and failures, aches and pains, frustrations and delights. But more than that, it's the story of a great discovery: as we try to shape a landscape to reflect who we are, we find that who we are has been reshaped in the process.