This month’s book, Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The plants and places that inspired the classic children’s tales by Marta McDowell, connects us once again to our childhood and gardens. My grandchildren enjoy Peter Rabbit today and laugh hilariously during the beautiful children’s 2018 film Peter Rabbit. I laugh too.

McDowell researched Potter’s life, work and gardens, travelling to visit where Potter lived, worked and gardened. The first half of the book is Her Life as a Gardener, but is so much more as her childhood, adulthood and art education and enormous body of work are explored. McDowell describes the gardens lived in and visited and the important part they played in Potter’s life. The book is full of Potter’s drawings, watercolors and photographs, which are strikingly beautiful and sensitive.

The second half of the book, The Year in Beatrix Potter’s Gardens, takes each season and shows us images of Potter’s gardens and details how she cared for them. She was a down-on-one’s-knees in the dirt kind of gardener:  planting, weeding and dividing. Her botanical drawings, book illustrations and photographs and photographs taken by McDowell make the book a page turner.

There is information on Visiting Beatrix Potter’s Gardens. You can start in the South Kensington neighborhood and end up in the Lake District. This could be another bucket list trip. I will add to my list that starts with a visit to the location of Anne of Green Gables.