A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants

Combing the curiosity of The Botany of Desire and the playful spirit of Wicked Plants, a witty and engaging history of botany and gardening memoir from the author of Paradise Under Glass—an easy-to-follow, anecdotal tutorial on the fascinating science of plants.

In Paradise Under Glass, Ruth Kassinger— a self-described "wanton killer of plants"—recounted with grace, humor, and poignancy her moving journey from brown thumb to green, sharing the lessons she learned building a home conservatory in the wake of a devastating personal crisis.

In A Garden of Marvels, she enhances and extends her story. While Kassinger successfully created her dream conservatory and rectified her initial gardening mistakes—the over-watering and under-fertilizing that often kill plants—she realized she had no idea what to do to help them thrive. Until she completely understood how plants actually worked, she couldn't know exactly what they needed.

In her friendly and reassuring voice Kassinger introduces the basic botany of plants—flowers, roots, stems, and leaves—and explains how they function together. Combining science and botanical knowledge with reflections on her personal quest to become a better gardener, and illustrated with more than two-dozen black and white drawings, Garden of Marvels is a journey of discovery that offers fresh and unexpected insights into the natural.