'Life in the Garden' lovingly recalls the place of gardens in an author's life

In the beginning, there was a garden. This is true in the Bible, of course; Adam and Eve living in that teeming paradise, repainted and reimagined by artists across centuries. But it was also the case for Claude Monet, who carefully designed his flower beds so that later he might paint them, and for Virginia Woolf, who wrote of the inspirational power of dirt under her fingernails. The garden was there for Beatrix Potter’s country mice to learn their lessons and to bestow metaphor