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Yesterday was moving day at my father's house. After so many months of packing and renovation, the big truck came. I snuck away from the activities for two beautiful hours in the afternoon to celebrate the release of The Art of Gardening (Timber Press) by the gardeners of Chanticleer. (And then rushed home, changed back into grunge wear, and began again the unpacking of boxes.)

Readers of my blog and books know that Chanticleer has served as backdrop for many of my musings, both nonfiction (Ghosts in the Garden) and fiction (Nothing but Ghosts). (Indeed, my Inky story about this fabled landscape is featured in Love: A Philadelphia Affair.) But as a writer I merely bear witness. I do not know the names of most things, do not capitalize upon the folds in the earth, do not walk the garden every day looking for the ebbing away and the new opportunity.

Bill Thomas and his gardeners do. They make these now 48 acres (the garden is growing) glow, season after season, with their plants, their sense of purpose, their artistry. You'll find their winter projects—clay pots, wood furniture, metal work, hand rails, sculptures—in among the blooms. You'll hear them talking about ways to preserve the biodiversity of soil and to optimize microclimates, not to mention the secrets still stashed in the greenhouse.

The Art of Gardening, featuring photographs by Rob Cardillo (who once took this photo of me on a rainy Chanticleer day for what has become an award-winning magazine), is subtitled "Design, Inspiration, and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer." Its authors are the gardeners themselves, with Bill Thomas editing the overall narrative and Eric Hsu providing the captions. The history and vision of Chanticleer is represented here, as are design strategies, reports on experiments, and a planting list.

It's a lovely compilation, celebrated on a gorgeous day that also marked the unveiling of the grand new path that winds up toward the Chanticleer house and (at this particular moment in time) makes the hover above the ground feel airbrushed with a color that is not quite pink and not quite purple.

Huge congratulations to the Chanticleer gardeners (and Rob) whose artistic spirits are so well captured here.

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I have spoken here of Adam Levine, a Philadelphia writer, historian, gardener, and friend who was so instrumental in my search for Schuylkill River images during the creation of Flow. I have referenced a certain Rob Cardillo, an exquisite photographer (he and Adam together created the definitive guide to the great gardens of Philadelphia), who recently asked me to join him at Chanticleer in something other than a black coat. (I took my own small camera along and snapped these photos.) Let me here introduce Scott Meyer and Kim Brubaker, former editor and art director for Organic Gardening, respectively.

Together these four have concocted a most gorgeous magazine called Grow, for the 25,000 or more members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. It has launched this week. It is worthy of a celebration.

I was honored to contribute this back-page essay to Grow. Rob Cardillo took this photograph just before the rains unleashed at Chanticleer. I share just one column of the text. The rest lives for the Growers of PHS.

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The rain was just beginning to fall as Rob Cardillo and I set off down the hill of Chanticleer. The glorious garden is closed now for the winter, but Rob, a tremendous photographer (see his images here), was taking portraits for a new project now under way with our mutual friend, Adam Levine.

I've contributed in a small way to the project and agreed to an accompanying portrait if (and only if) Rob kept me in the far distance of his images.

He kept that promise.

I snapped these two photographs in between takes.

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