The Gardener's Year

Karen Capek is widely considered the greatest Czech author of the first half of the twentieth century. A novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist, he was a strong dissident voice during the period of fascist buildup in Europe between the World Wars. Most famous for his play R.U.R., which coined the word “robot,” he wrote a number of satires, as well as the utopian fantasy novel War with the Newts. He died in 1938.

Michael Pollan is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Botany of Desire and Second Nature, named one of the best gardening books of the twentieth century by the American Horticultural Society. He is a contributing editor to Harper’s magazine and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. Pollan chose the books for the Modern Library Gardening series because, as he writes, “these writers are some of the great talkers in the rich, provocative, and frequently uproarious conversation that, metaphorically at least, has been taking place over the back fence of our gardens at least since the time of Pliny.”

Foreword
Translator's note
How Gardens Are Laid Out
How a Gardener Comes into Being
The Gardner's January
Seeds
The Gardner's February
On the Art of Gardening
The Gardner's March
Buds
The Gardner's April
Festival
The Gardner's May
Blessed Rain
The Gardner's June
On Vegetable Growers
The Gardner's July
A Botanical Chapter
The Gardner's August
On Cactus Growers
The Gardner's September
Soil
The Gardner's October
On the Beauties of Autumn
The Gardner's November
Preparation
The Gardner's December
On the Gardening Life
Explanatory Notes
Afterword
A Chronology of Karel Capek
A Brief Chronology of Josef Capek

'Karel Capek's distillation of the agony and the ecstasy that runs through every gardener's year has been beautifully translated by Geoffrey Newsome.' John Patten, Country Life, August 2003
Review in Hortus, No. 67, Autumn 2003
'Capek's The Gardener's Year is a celebration of the virtues of being close to the soil...The Gardener's Year...is perfect vacation reading for the gardener and nongardener...It's sunny with a hint of a breeze and just a small cloud the size of a man's hand.' ~ Barbara Day, The Prague Post, 06/08/2006
'They don't make writers like that any more' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
'His thoughts and descriptions remain fresh and provocative' Ken Worpole, New Statesman
'...The Gardener's Year, excellently translated by Geoffrey Newsome, is a work of great charm and considerable subtlety...' ~ Miranda Seymour, The Literary Review, September 2003
'Capek is observant about nature and perceptive about people. Universal truths hover behind the gentle self-mockery. Labour, patience, humility and hope are really the themes of this beguiling writer. How lovely to meet him the pages of such a charming little book' ~ The Spectator, 2003