Cindy McNatt, a local garden newspaper columnist, wrote last week about two garden writers who sound wonderful. I thought her column was entertaining enough to excerpt here:

"Most literary-type garden books are too saccharine for my taste. I don't enjoy long passages without pictures about delicate columbines dancing along the dew-dotted fields or chapters about working off some author's bitter divorce in the potato patch...

[by contrast] ". . . [Beverly] Nichols' books are funny. . .

If you prefer to be entertained while learning how to furtively fill your purse or pockets with other people's plants, include some of his volumes in your book collection. . .

. . . The late dog-loving Henry Mitchell is another favorite garden writer. . . in Mitchell's books you'll find paragraphs about moths mating on his clematis. . . but also even more insightful words about how little it takes to make a gardener happy."

The books by these authors that she recommends are:

Nichols: Down the Garden Path (1932)

Sunlight on the Lawn (1952)

Garden Open Today (1963)

Garden Open Tomorrow (1968)

Available through www.Timberpress.com

Books by Mitchell: The Essential Earthman

One Man's Garden

Henry Mitchell on Gardening

Available from Houghton-Mifflin.