An exuberant, funny, and soulful meditation on the immense pleasures and the inevitable heartaches of gardeningby the bestselling essayist and award-winning poet.

In Why I Garden, the author of The Book of Delights brings his keen observation and joyful spirit to his own backyard garden where he grows everything from peas, collards and potatoes to goumi, gooseberry and squash. But you don’t have to be a gardener to lose yourself in Ross Gay’s lyrical voice, his humor, and his original way of looking at the world.

There’s the “unabashed lustiness” of morning glories, and hummingbirds “swinging on the clothesline like an old married couple;” the thud of pawpaws dropping on the cellar door, and the seductive centerfolds of seed catalogs. We also encounter the kind of surprising and urgent connections we’ve come to expect from Gay: the 1983 Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers serve as a benchmark for a thriving, diverse garden; an old toilet bowl planted with flowers leads to a consideration of the war machine; and he wonders “why prayer looks so much like digging potatoes.”

Why I Garden is about gardening, but like all of Ross Gay’s work, it’s also about how we—gardeners and nongardeners alike—care for each other and this planet. It is a book that, like a garden might, beckons us together to cherish the earthly delights that are all around us.