Such a disappointing read (listen in my case, but the audiobook reader wasn't the issue here). I love Lively's novels but found this book so ... meh in the better places and disappointingly (lazily) xenophobic (by Lively's own admission) and colonialist. She cheers for the US-based pioneers who imported their gardening mores without acknowledging either the harm of importing plants nor the very real use of the land by indigenous and Native peoples already in the US. Later, she acknowledges that the rural wildlife have more right to be in her garden since she is the interloper, which is nice but also ... apply that to people? She extols the 'universal' regard for English gardens before briefly admitting Japanese gardens are well known -- then she makes a throwaway pronouncement that 'those' gardens aren't 'real' gardens. Her observations on non-British gardeners was ... I didn't notice anything overtly racist but her focus on whether someone was British descent or not when working with her or at their allotment felt icky.