Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden Book

In conversation with William Baldwin. Emily Whaley's garden on Church Street in Charleston, South Carolina, may be the most visited private garden in the country. And no wonder. It is the life's work of a vibrant, sociable, opinionated, determined, forceful woman who has spent the last eighty-five years cultivating whatever life offered her. MRS. WHALEY AND HER CHARLESTON GARDEN captures and preserves Emily Whaley's distinctive voice and braces us with a clear understanding of how one might cultivate a practical personal philosophy alongside one's garden. "An ageless and captivating visit." --Publishers Weekly; "South Carolina gardener grows into phenom." --USA Today, cover story; "Emily Whaley is wonderful, both in and out of her garden."--Rosemary Verey, author of THE AMERICAN WOMAN'S GARDEN. As seen on CBS Sunday Morning. Now in its 6th printing.

Publishers Weekly

This book constitutes an ageless and captivating visit with 85-year-old Emily Whaley, the daughter of a South Carolina country doctor and his wife, who married a successful lawyer and moved to Charleston 60 years ago. As a special gift, Whaley's husband hired a professional designer to plan a formal garden with a "romantic natural background" for the house on Church Street, where she still lives. Thousands of people visit the garden each fall during the city's garden festival. Chatting with William Baldwin, a writer, home designer and fellow South Carolinian, Whaley breathlessly and delightfully describes her garden, other gardens she's known and recollections of her childhood, with her fresh mind and mint-condition memory stitching the strands into a rich memoir. Whaley's simple, direct language conveys not just her many frank opinions but her self-described joie de vivre and appreciation of the houses and gardens in her life. Hers is a world full of sunlight, "uncluttered space," Southern-city charms, idiosyncratic tradition, hearty gregariousness and the ubiquitous presence of flowers. In the South, as the author describes it, gardens are not simply decorative outdoor areas but places where one lives out one's life, as in the rooms of one's house. (Mar.)