Grace from the Garden by Debra Engle talks about gardening of course, but really it’s about how people pulling together can make a difference. These graceful essays show how gardening and gardeners, in all their wide diversity, affect lives and make the world a little friendlier. Some of the projects described include:

-An inner city community garden run by an former professional basketball player

-“Garden Angels”, a group of volunteers who install and maintain small gardens for elderly who are no longer physically able to

-Juvenile offenders who work off community service hours in a local vegetable garden where they learn to give back

-A doctor in the United States who has built greenhouses for hospitals in famine-threatened North Korea

-The story of the Portland Memory Garden, built for people suffering from Alzheimer’s and their caregivers

Gardens, whether big or small change, heal, and draw people together making the world better for all of us.