Green Grows the City

Anyone who has ever created a garden knows that it is a process replete with drama: there's the feverish excitement of drawing up plans and making lists of plants; the bleak depression of realizing that the plans will have to be altered; the "Eureka!" moment when a brilliant solution presents itself; the grim frustration of dealing with meddlesome neighbors and recalcitrant plants. For Beverley Nichols (1898-1983), making a new garden in a London suburb in the years just before World War II was positively operatic in its emotional trajectory. Fans of Beverley Nichols will find in Green Grows the City the same elements that have delighted them in his other books: the wit, the style, the cats, and of course Gaskin, gentleman's gentleman extraordinaire. Those new to Nichols are in for a rare treat.