Read this floral philosophy and free yourself of electronic foolery. Today we slog through digital information but find little meaning. The Internet overwhelms and makes too much too easy. Software skews learning. Not long ago when unsure of how to spell a word, we looked in dictionaries, and to our surprise found words we did not know. Now software checks our spelling and sends us the news stories it thinks we want to read. The newspaper alerted us to news we did not imagine but might find useful, even if only to stretch our minds. But gardening is different from virtual reality, so different we forget to realize why we love it so. In this book blossoms some plant-centered philosophy. Eminently sensible, provocative, and immediately useful, The Magnolia Principle analyzes attitudes expressed via plants and offers an escape from computer-generated buzziness. In these pages plants take on alternative meaning.

Here plants become portal. The principle of the title emphasizes choice, the choice to look around positively, accepting some loss in exchange for some gain, but always with the intention (and the hope) that gain will triumph. A magnolia might bloom many times in Indiana before a frost prevents the beauty. Why not plant it and risk the occasional loss for the intermittent splendor? Why not look at plants and also through them, through plants as portal to philosophy?

Wisteria triumphs only slowly, as its roots reach deeply: years later, pruning the roots with a spade often produces spectacular blossoming. Hydrangeas need water, lots of water, at first: they need a patient gardener, one willing to water regularly and frequently and munificently. Rhododendrons too can and will triumph in Indiana soils and microclimates and as this book makes clear, Lucifer plants will bloom adjacent to a church. Knowledge proves a necessity, but gardener attitude may be more important and portal and attitude change together in ways that shape larger life.

In the pages that follow, Cheryl Jacques walks carefully through that portal, guiding the reader into the philosophy suffusing plants, a philosophy especially valuable in this hurried, jittery age. The Magnolia Principle illuminates friendship, aging, illness, disability, energy, determination, and the sheer joy that plants provide when gardeners see past their frustrations and vexations through the portal plants provide. Here find a modest book whose meaning is rare and lasting.

John R. Stilgoe
Professor of Landscape Architecture
Harvard University