Seed to Dust: Life, Nature, and a Country Garden

Product Description For the gardener in your life, or for anyone who loved Late Migrations and H is for HawkA stunning meditation on gardening and the wisdom of plants, “that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere ... Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing.” —Shelf Awareness (STARRED Review) With “chapters... [that] shimmer like lantern slides, lit with luminous imagery ... Seed to Dust is an invitation to read this world as Mr. Hamer does—with a close eye to what changes, and what does not.”—The Wall Street JournalMarc Hamer has nurtured the same 12-acre garden in the Welsh countryside for over two decades. The garden is vast and intricate. It’s rarely visited, and only Hamer knows of its secrets. But it’s not his garden. It belongs to his wealthy and elegant employer, Miss Cashmere. But the garden does not really belong to her, either. As Hamer writes, “Like a book, a garden belongs to everyone who sees it.”In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that “belongs to everyone.” He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he’s in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and—now—feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.As the seasons change, Hamer also reflects on the changes he has observed in Miss Cashmere’s life from afar: the death of her husband and the departure of her children from the stately home where she now lives alone. At the book’s end, Hamer’s connection to Miss Cashmere changes shape, and new insights into relationships and the beauty and brutality of nature emerge. Just like all good books and gardens, Seed to Dust is filled with equal parts life and death, beauty and decay, and every reader will find something different to admire. Review Longlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing“Mr. Hamer has found his ideal calling in this book stitched together from small essays, a genre in which such capricious mutability of opinion is not only tolerated but encouraged. Through his words, we connect with the ultimate text, the landscape itself.” —Wall Street Journal“Hamer’s signature prose, rich with precise, detailed observations that evoke the luminous wonder that informs and illuminates all being, is on full display... A book to savour, reflect upon and re-read.”—The Vancouver Sun “Seed to Dust is a magical amalgamation of memoir, natural history, philosophy and gardening, a breathtaking narrative that transcends genre and geography. Fans of Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek will find Hamer to be a kindred spirit. Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing, Seed to Dust is that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere.” —Shelf Awareness STARRED review“A wholly original, semi-autobiographical book on how to live, how to be calm and content with only a little, in a quietly humming garden.” —Daily Mail“Hamer's plant wisdom is his way of understanding culture at large ... Life’s affirmation is to be found everywhere in [Seed to Dust]” —Toronto Star“This account of a year in the life of the garden Hamer tends in Wales is, naturally, as much about the gardener as the life in his care .... [T]here is entrancing natural lore in this distinctive memoir.” —Macleans“Hamer has a canny way of divining the sacred in the quotidian.” —Booklist“I'm so grateful that this kindred spirit set aside his tools awhile and came indoors to write. No facet of nature, however subtle, eludes Marc Hamer—and I relish being invited along on each intimate adventure.” —Margaret Roach, author of A Way to Garden“[Hamer] is a life-hardened man who has made himself soft…a man who has come through.” —The Guardian“An intensely lyrical account of a singl