People who love this world, people who pay attention, are gardeners, whether or not they have ever picked up a trowel. Because gardening is not just about digging. Gardening is about cherishing. And to cherish, one must be present.

Garden columnist, Henry Mitchell, wrote that one day we would all die, but that the questions is how we spent our days. Were we fidgeting over moles and fungi and varmints, or glorying, year by year, in the daffodils?

• Terry talks about opening our heart to the rhythms of the garden.
• Learning to practice the sacrament of the blessed present.
• Working to embrace the demanding marriage of loving and losing.
• Cultivating appreciation for ordinary gifts of grace, the value of solitude, and the healing power of nature.
• Terry’s stories will lead you to nurture your soul and renew your sense of what it means to live fully alive.

REVIEWS

Soul Gardening just arrived today.  I’ve been browsing it, and I must say it’s my favorite book of yours yet.  I know it’s not your newest but it is luminous.  Love the quotes you’ve sprinkled throughout.  Reading, skimming really at the moment, is like having Mozart leap off the page in words.  Totally glorious! 
–SuchinRai.zenfolio.com

This is an inspirational book about a man’s remarkable transition from a success driven minster to a relaxed, stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of guy. Terry Hershey explains in his inspirational book Soul Gardening: Cultivating the Good Life that gardening is a way of cultivating the soul, of slowing down in today’s hard driven world and enjoying the poetic simplicities of life. Poignant and revealing, Hershey celebrates the joy of reveling in nature, of digging in the dirt and relaxing on a bench beneath a honeysuckle plant. Smart, funny and beautifully written, this is a guide for living and enjoying all that life has to offer.
–Chapters.Indigo Bookstores

Life is a garden. Exquisite beauty is everywhere, and Terry Hershey’s writing will help you adjust your lens in order to see it, feel it, and be grateful. A magnificant book.
—Harold Ivan Smith, author of Decembered Grief

When I looked up from reading Soul Gardening, I was surprised to find myself in my living room and not in Mr. Hershey’s garden. This is not just a book. It’s an experience.
—Barbara DeGrote-Sorensen, author of Six Weeks to a Simpler Lifestyle.

I recently received a copy of your new book, Soul Gardening. Enthused would be an understatement. I could not put it down and even now as I write I am eager to return to its pages! Bravo! I have been looking for some time to have a book compel me, and voila; Soul Gardening appears. I want to go work in the garden, take rest on my Adirondacks, read your reflections and let the work of my hands baptize its pages. It is an honest, earthy, spiritually insightful book that needs its special shelf among the plants and tools of my garden and my soul. I love it.
–A Sabbath Moment Friend

An aromatic idle that allows you to draw a deep breath and…sigh. Recollections of innocence, yearning, adventures, and dreams awaken. The seeded soul flowers anew! Terry Hershey cultivates alchemy, as when a friend’s accusation that a passion for gardening is selfishness (“Shouldn’t your passions be other-related?”), is transformed to an understanding that when we allow ourselves to become part of that grander scheme of creation, only then may we become “non-self-centered.” Indeed, we can never truly “do” for others, unless we allow ourselves to BE the essence of who we truly are. If you’re a “serious note-taker,” that is, a person prone to underlining and jotting copious notes in the margins of books, you may begin feeling an uncontrollable urge to doodle in this one!
—Claire Krulikowski, author of Living a Radical Peace