Book Review - A Mystic Garden

Thanks to Dawn Wilson for giving me this little book so packed full of life and living, death and resurrection . . .


A Mystic Garden derived its name from author Gunilla Norris's hometown of Mystic, Connecticut. It is a fitting name, for because of the geographical location of her home and the inner spirit of which she wrote this one hundred and on page book. A tiny book it is in size and bulk, but the inside of it, the writing, is immense and will touch the heart and soul of anyone who picks it up and begins to read.

A Mystic Garden is many things according to the one who is reading it. Gunilla Norris speaks of gardening throughout this book and how the four seasons affect the seeding, the pampering and the growing of her garden up until harvest time, or if there are merely flowers she grows, the peak of their life span.

But A Mystic Garden goes a step further than most gardening books. The author relates gardening, its hardships, its promise, failures and success to the human essence and the ups and downs we enjoy and are saddened by. This book takes the reader from the starkness and apparent death of winter to our own lives and even souls. As the garden grows fallow during the dearth of warmth, so does our spirit as we hunker down in front of the fireplaces and keep artificially warm. We await spring and its sunshine and growing abilities. Like the garden we are dormant for the most part during the winter season.

A Mystic Garden takes the reader through all four seasons, complaining about this or that and joyful because of that or this. Through it all, Gunilla Norris gives example and example of the similarity of her garden to our souls. When the garden is in full bloom and the flowers and vegetables are at their peak to yet another winter where everything is bleak and frozen this book correlates it to our human inner self in such a beautiful and simple way that it will touch the reader in places where he or she hasn't been touched before.

I wholeheartedly recommend A Mystic Garden, this pint-sized book of death to its rejuvenation of seeding, followed by growth as it blooms for the harvest to come and back to winters cold fingers of death again. Gunilla Norris prefaces the book with a Spanish Proverb, In the garden more grows than the gardener sows. If you find yourself turning the pages of this book you will quite understand what this proverb means.

©November 23, 2009 / Jerry Pat Bolton