A New York Times Bestseller There aren't many books more beloved than The Tale of Peter Rabbit and even fewer authors as iconic as Beatrix Potter. Her characters-Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle Duck, and all the rest-exist in a charmed world filled with flowers and gardens. In Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, bestselling author Marta McDowell explores the origins of Beatrix Potter's love of gardening and plants and shows how this passion came to be reflected in her work. The book begins with a gardener's biography, highlighting the key moments and places throughout her life that helped define her. Next, follow Beatrix Potter through a year in her garden, with a season-by-season overview of what is blooming that truly brings her gardens alive. The book culminates in a traveler's guide, with information on how and where to visit Potter's gardens today. Richly illustrated and filled with quotations from her books, letters, and journals, Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life is essential reading for all who know and cherish Beatrix Potter and her classic tales. Marta McDowell lives, gardens, and writes in Chatham, New Jersey. She consults for public gardens and private clients, writes and lectures on gardening topics, and teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden, where she studied landscape design. Marta's particular interest is in authors and their gardens, the connection between the pen and the trowel. She is the 2019 winner of the Garden Club of America's Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement. Her books include Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, All the Presidents' Gardens, World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life, and Unearthing the Secret Garden. Visit her at martamcdowell.com. Preface First, a confession. I did not read Beatrix Potter as a child. In fact, I learned about Peter Rabbit from a knockoff of sorts. The spoiled youngest of four, I would steadily pester my mother for books on outings to Woolworths, and one day she bought me a shiny-covered Golden Book called Little Peter Cottontail by Thornton W. Burgess. Its naughty rabbit cavorted in wildflowers and visited a farm, but never found Mr. McGregor's garden. My introduction to Beatrix Potter came much later in life. In 1981, at a shower celebrating my upcoming nuptials, someone gave me a large cookie jar in the shape of a bonneted, apron-bedecked "porcupine" holding an iron. Wedding showers are awkward at best, particularly for learning about famous characters from childhood literature that one has somehow, in two-plus decades of life, managed to miss. What did I say when opening this gift in front of a sizeable, entirely female audience of friends, family, and future relations? That memory is lost. I have also repressed the identity of the gift-giver. Neither the Mrs. Tiggy-winkle cookie jar (a hedgehog, if you please) nor the marriage lasted long. Fast-forward to 1997, when I set off with my second (and last) husband and two aged parents for a tour of Scotland and the Lake District. William Wordsworth was on our agenda. His homes, Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount, are both near Grasmere and not far from Windermere, where we were staying. And what of Beatrix Potter, that children's author and artist? Our visit to Hill Top Farm, Miss Potter's beloved home on the other side of Windermere, turned out to be a highlight. For one thing, the sun came out that afternoon after a week of Scotland in the rain. (My mother, who had brought only one pair of shoes-my father would blow dry them for her every night in our B&B-was especially grateful.) The Hill Top garden was at its August peak; the tour was engaging. I learned that day that Beatrix Potter was a gardener. I garden, though some days I feel that I do most of my gardening at the keyboard. I am intr

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