Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart

by Carol Wall Narrated by Cynthia Darlow

Overview

A bestseller in the making, this is the true story of a unique friendship between two people who had nothing-and ultimately everything-in common.

Carol Wall, a white woman living in a lily-white neighborhood in Middle America, was at a crossroads in her life. Her children were grown; she had successfully overcome illness; her beloved parents were getting older. One day she notices a dark-skinned African man tending her neighbor's yard. His name is Giles Owita. He bags groceries at the supermarket. He comes from Kenya. And he's very good at gardening.

Before long Giles is transforming not only Carol's yard, but her life. Though they are seemingly quite different, a caring bond grows between them. But they both hold long-buried secrets that, when revealed, will cement their friendship forever.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2014 - AudioFile

While going through some personal struggles in her life, including a recurrence of breast cancer and caring for her aging parents, Carol Wall finds inspiration in the friendship she strikes up with her gardener, Giles Owita, an immigrant from Kenya who is facing his own set of difficult circumstances. Narrator Cynthia Darlow handles Carol's struggles with grace and an introspective tone, as well as a touch of a Southern accent for the Virginia resident. However, Darlow's voicing for Owita and his wife's accents is uneven, sometimes ending up sounding more Indian than Kenyan. Owita imparts valuable lessons to Carol, not only in terms of tending to her lawn but also in handling life's difficulties with dignity and acceptance. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Dominique Browning

You won't learn much about gardening in this beautiful book…But you will put Wall's memoir down with a new appreciation for how far roots can travel for nourishment, especially those that spring from our hearts.

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/09/2013
In this moving memoir chronicling the many lasting rewards garnered from an unexpected friendship, writer Wall enlists a neighbor’s gardener, a man from Kenya, to help her maintain her garden. What begins as a purely professional relationship, with Wall hoping to learn more about gardening, blossoms into an intimate friendship. Wall, a breast cancer patient, admits that, before she met Giles Owita, her outlook on life was less than sunny. Always an introvert and prone to social gaffes, Wall was dealing at the time with her parent’s decline. Slowly, over three years, Owita, a quiet and unassuming man, transforms Wall’s unkempt lawn into a living masterpiece, showing Wall the beauty inherent in everyday life. While transmitting the knowledge for growing a bountiful garden, Owita passes along how one might live a satisfying life. “Each time I walked away from Giles, I felt either enlightened by his brilliance or unburdened of some of my worries and sadness.” Wall eventually learns of the personal, family and health issues endured by her friend, marveling at his grace and strength. This tender narrative gently probes the complicated terrain of American race relations, dealing with serious illness and facing the death of loved ones. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

In this profoundly moving memoir, Owita teaches Wall how to find grace amid heartbreak and to accept that beauty exists because it is fleeting—as in her garden, as in life.” —People, 4 stars

“In this lovely memoir, a surprising friendship blooms between a horticulturist with a harrowing secret and the author, a cancer survivor with a bad attitude and a sad yard. A perfect spring awakening.”—Good Housekeeping

"No green thumb is required to enjoy the warmhearted pleasures of Carol Wall's moving memoir, Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening.... magnetically compelling ... Grace and gardening go hand-in-glove in this fine book about what really matters in life: friendship, kindness and watching a garden grow." —USA Today 
 

“With her children grown and out of the house, Carol Wall is obsessed—perhaps overly so—with ripping out her azaleas. That is, until she meets a certain Giles Owita, Kenyan gardener, supermarket bagger, general-life philosopher and perhaps one of the most refined and gracious characters to ever hit the page (except that he’s real)… A warning for the shy: The basic goodness of Owita’s attitude may cause you to beam spontaneously as you read, leading to off looks from strangers at the coffee shop.” —Oprah.com

"A must-read memoir.... Both shocking and profoundly moving. This book is not just about gardening." —AARP blog

“In this heartbreaking yet heartwarming paean to the joys of friendship and gardening, Wall crafts an elegiac tribute to an extraordinary man.” —Booklist 

"[T]his memoir chronicl[es] the many lasting rewards garnered from an unexpected friendship..." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A pleasure to read. Wall’s bittersweet story of human kindness has universal appeal." —Kirkus Reviews

"I couldn’t put this book down. I found myself liking the principal characters from the opening pages, and my affection for them never wavered. If you enjoy inspirational memoirs or gardening books (or both), this moving account of a life-changing friendship is for you." —Bookpage

Library Journal

10/15/2013
Wall, a white woman with grown children who had survived illness and was now contemplating her next move, noticed a black man working hard in a neighbor's yard. Giles Owita, who had come from Kenya and bagged groceries to make ends meet, was soon cleaning Wall's yard, too. They became friends, bonding over secrets they've both hidden, and the result is this much-touted memoir.

MAY 2014 - AudioFile

While going through some personal struggles in her life, including a recurrence of breast cancer and caring for her aging parents, Carol Wall finds inspiration in the friendship she strikes up with her gardener, Giles Owita, an immigrant from Kenya who is facing his own set of difficult circumstances. Narrator Cynthia Darlow handles Carol's struggles with grace and an introspective tone, as well as a touch of a Southern accent for the Virginia resident. However, Darlow's voicing for Owita and his wife's accents is uneven, sometimes ending up sounding more Indian than Kenyan. Owita imparts valuable lessons to Carol, not only in terms of tending to her lawn but also in handling life's difficulties with dignity and acceptance. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2014-01-23
Serendipitous life lessons from an unexpected source. Though she admittedly lacked the green thumb (or the inclination) necessary to beautify the environs of her home, 52-year-old Wall enlisted the aid of her neighbor's gifted Kenyan gardener. Giles Owita, an unassuming landscape artist outfitted with a "coiled energy" and a "navy work suit with bright white leather tennis shoes," not only beautified Wall's yard; their seemingly innocent relationship opened her eyes to international culture and nature ("Giles broke me—cured me—of my dread of flowers") and expanded her capacity for bliss. His arrival in her life was a timely one, as the author and her husband, Dick, had endured a year shaken by tragedy and illness. A breast cancer survivor, Wall had begun the heartbreaking ordeal of relocating her elderly parents to an assisted living facility, and her three children all suffered medical and developmental maladies. Throughout their many seasons together, Wall and Owita embarked on a cross-cultural exchange of histories, ideas, warm wisdom, respect and reinvigorating landscapes. Through her neighbor, the author discovered Owita's surprisingly extensive horticultural education and a series of mutual commonalities, including familial strife and a cancer diagnosis. The pair, along with Owita's wife, Bienta, grew ever closer within a unique friendship that Wall, in consistently articulate, affably crafted prose, compares to "a river that sometimes split into two separate streams, but always came back together again." Subtle changes began to transform Wall's outlook on life, and gradually, the author allowed herself to appreciate the grand spectacle of her lush backyard oasis. Owita not only performed an aesthetic miracle on Wall's property, but he also educated, enlivened and transformed her life and surroundings in graceful, heartwarming and rewarding ways. A pleasure to read. Wall's bittersweet story of human kindness has universal appeal.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171816919
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/04/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.***

Copyright © 2014 by Helen Oyeyemi

Prologue

 

I never liked getting my hands dirty. This was one reason that our yard looked so sad. But there were other reasons, too— bigger reasons that were much harder to confront than brittle grass and overgrown bushes.

It’s not that I was ignoring our yard on purpose. Every once in a while we hired someone to plant or trim something. My husband, Dick, did his share of mowing. But he never did it happily. We weren’t yard-proud the way some people are. And when the kids were young, there was always something more important than yard work to do. Going to one of their games or events, running them to school and lessons, or shepherding them to doctor appointments—all those things ranked way higher on our list of priorities.

Once the kids were grown, I still managed to find more important things to do. I much preferred reading a book, or watching a documentary on TV, or going out to dinner with Dick to pruning a bush. I loved our house, and I enjoyed decorating the inside, but there was never anything about maintaining a house that I enjoyed. In some couples, one spouse makes up for the f laws of the other. But for better or worse, my beloved spouse and I shared the same f law in this department. Neither of us was handy. We ignored our loose front doorknob until it went from shaky to wobbly and finally fell off when we tried to exit the house one evening. Dick watched it fall to the hardwood floor with a thunk, then looked at me and said, “Time to move.”

I don’t think we were entirely wrong in holding on to our low-intervention policy. Once when Dick and I were walking through town, we were stopped by a group of young women who were celebrating their friend’s upcoming wedding. They were asking all the obviously married women they saw for advice for the new bride. I said, “You know, my life really began when I got married.” They all laughed and told me that I was the first woman they’d stopped who hadn’t said, “Don’t do it.” Then I told them that my best advice was not to approach marriage like it was an arrangement between property co-owners. It seemed to me like too many people spent too much of their time taking care of their houses instead of enjoying their spouses. And where was the fun in that?

I liked to think that it was a valid philosophy of life that kept me out of the yard, and not just sheer laziness. In any case, to me, even worse than digging out a screwdriver to fix our doorknob would have been digging in the dirt. I had zero interest in that area of our property. I don’t think I even really looked at it.

Then one day, I noticed that our yard had slowly, gradually transformed itself. No longer could I f latter myself that it was natural and unmanicured because that was the aesthetic I preferred. No, our yard wasn’t just rough around the edges. It had become a genuine embarrassment. Maybe we didn’t have the worst yard on the block. But we were close to it, and one good mowing in our most neglectful neighbor’s yard might easily nudge us into the bottom slot. And that just wouldn’t do. I might never have been yard-proud, but I did not want to be yard-ashamed.

So I decided that it was time to do something about this situation. It was a fixable problem, after all—and how nice it was to have one of those.

When I passed our neighbor Sarah’s yard I couldn’t help seeing what an amazing job her gardener had done. Sarah was a master gardener herself, but recently she’d gotten busy at work and had brought in some help. And even I could tell that a true artist was at work there. Maybe I could hire her gardener, I thought to myself. And then our yard would be as beautiful as hers. It would be healthy and lush and well taken care of—just the way I wanted to be myself.

A few days later I saw the mystery gardener in the flesh—the artist who’d wrought such a miracle transformation in my neighbor’s yard—and it was kismet. Love at first sight. No, it wasn’t the kind of love that causes you to question your marriage. It was the kind of love that causes you to question yourself. The kind that makes you want to be a better person. The kind that changes your life completely.

His name was Giles Owita, and from the start, something f lowered between us and around us. First he became my gardener, and then he became my friend. And while I knew from the moment I met him that he was something special—truly, I didn’t know the half of it.

Videos