A legendary editor at The New Yorker during its first thirty-four years, Katharine S. White was also a great garden enthusiast. In March 1958 she began publishing her popular column, "Onward and Upward in the Garden." Her first column elicited loads of fan mail, but one letter in particular caught her attention. From Elizabeth Lawrence, a noted southern garden writer, it was filled with suggestions and encouragement. When Katharine wrote back her appreciation, she reported on her Maine garden and discussed the plants and books that interested her. Thus began a correspondence that would last for almost twenty years, until Katharine's death in 1977.

Two Gardeners is a collection of these luminous letters, edited and introduced by Emily Herring Wilson. The letters bring to life the unique epistolary friendship between two intelligent women, the "formidable" Mrs. White and the "shy" Miss Lawrence, both avid gardeners and readers, both at a stage of life when to make a new friend was rare indeed: when they first wrote to one another, Katharine was sixty-two, Elizabeth, fifty-four.

More than 150 letters went back and forth during the course of their correspondence, though Katharine and Elizabeth would meet face-to-face only once. Whether talking about gardens or books, friends or family, each held a special place in the other's life.

Illustrated with photographs of both Katharine White and Elizabeth Lawrence, their families, gardens, and houses, this book is a special treat for gardeners, literature lovers, and anyone who delights in reading about women's friendships.

"What a pleasure it is to rediscover Katharine White and Elizabeth Lawrence through their singular correspondence. (One even gets a bonus glimpse of Katharine's husband and great love, E. B. White-another letter writer to be reckoned with.) In this 'private garden,' writes Emily Wilson in her graceful introduction, an epistolary friendship grew, and helped sustain two uncommon women for nearly twenty years. To read their letters is to be admitted into the company of two people worth knowing, to enter a more civilized time, before e-mail. For this lovely book Emily Herring Wilson deserves a big bouquet."
-Linda H. Davis, author of Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White

"This is an entrancing book documenting the friendship of two supremely civilized and talented women. It may end up on the gardening shelf in bookstores, where it will instruct garden lovers of all ages. But like all great literary correspondence, it touches and illuminates many aspects of life."
-Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain and True North

"Emily Wilson has given us two remarkable women writers whose friendship is explored through the lens of their mutual passion for gardening. Lawrence and White are two quite different gardeners who nurture each other's souls as well as their border perennials. Two Gardeners is a fascinating glimpse of the writing life through the enrichment of the soil and the spirit."
-Linda Lear, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

"It comes as a great but wonderful surprise to learn that over 150 letters were exchanged over a period of more than two decades between Katharine S. White, one of America's finest editors, and Elizabeth Lawrence, one of our very best gardening writers. It's even better to discover that these letters have survived and have been edited with loving care by Emily Herring Wilson. This spirited and revealing correspondence illumines our understanding of American gardening and garden writing in the second half of the twentieth century. This book is a classic, no less than Mrs. White's magnificent Onward and Upward in the Garden and Miss Lawrence's Gardening for Love and A Southern Garden."
-Allen Lacy, author of A Year in Our Gardens

"Two Gardeners is one of the finest gardening books published in years, largely because it reveals as much about the character of these two remarkable women as it does about the plants they loved."
-Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review

"If you are feeling frantic about all those weeds growing in your garden, as well as some impossible workload, you might take to your hammock for a day with Two Gardeners. The break will do you good and so will reading about two other extremely harried women, deadline-driven writers and devoted gardeners."
-Anne Raver, The New York Times

"In 1958, Katharine S. White, an editor at this magazine and the wife of E. B. White, began writing a gardening column, which appeared intermittently, like lady's slippers, under the heading 'Onward and Upward in the Garden,' until 1970. The first essay prompted a fan letter from the distinguished Southern gardener Elizabeth Lawrence, who wrote a weekly column for The Charlotte Observer. In more than a hundred and fifty letters, they discussed subjects ranging from bloom times in their respective zones to meetings with cantankerous plantsmen, their burgeoning families, and, as time passed, the vicissitudes of old age. Those unfamiliar with Lawrence will be glad to meet her; for fans of the Whites, to hear once more about doings in North Brooklin, Maine, is akin to a visitation."
-The New Yorker

"Too often we head to the garden center on Saturday morning, load up on plants and call it gardening. Better to experience true garden drama with Two Gardeners."
-Newsweek

"Savor it; read it slowly if you can, because it will be a long time before such a treasure surfaces again."
-Amy Stewart, San Francisco Chronicle

"If you haven't dropped a line to your green-thumbed pen pal recently, you will after reading this delightful book."
-Stephanie Saulmon, Garden Design

Emily Herring Wilson is a writer, lecturer, and novice gardener living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The author of Hope and Dignity: Older Black Women of the South and coauthor of North Carolina Women: Making History, she has taught at Wake Forest University, Salem College, and Cornell University and is a MacDowell Colony Fellow.