A Place All Our Own: Lives Entwined in a Desert Garden

For twenty years Mary Irish, along with her husband Gary, tended a garden in Scottsdale, Arizona. Over the years they transformed it into a lively and lovely spot that reflected both its place in the world—hot, dry, and often hostile to gardeners who don’t understand its ways—and the particular passions of its two creators. Of course, not everything went as planned, and the garden talked back as much as it obeyed. But for these two gardeners, the unexpected outcome is one of gardening’s great pleasures. 

Mary Irish is a delightful writer. With grace, wit, and obvious affection, she tells the story of how she and Gary transformed a barren half-acre plot around their house in the center of Greater Phoenix into a haven: for its creators and their friends, for the birds and insects and other critters that have discovered it, and for the plants that have made it their home. Although it describes the experience of gardening in one of the most extreme climates in the inhabited world, A Place All Our Own will interest anyone who gardens—and everyone who enjoys a well-told, true-life nature tale.