Stewart covers all the basics that any beginner gardener would need to start planting—from growing vegetables to pruning shrubs—but she also goes deep on niche topics (climbing hydrangeas, heirloom tomatoes, for example). Throughout, she offers the kind of insightful advice that comes from decades of gardening. Like the beloved magazine she used to publish (RIP), the book is a mix of truly useful DIY info, like a step-by-step guide for how to properly plant a tree, juxtaposed with purely (and wildly) aspirational glimpses of Stewart’s own gardens, like a grove of 300(!) Japanese maples she has collected. 

Refreshingly, Stewart remains unapologetic about the ambition of her gardens, for example the chapter on fruit trees begins, “If you are willing to commit to a long-term, larger-scale, higher-maintenance endeavor…”