In 1922, brothers Bill and Rod Kelley opened up a nursery on land near Lake Minnetonka where their parents had settled decades earlier. They called it Kelley & Kelley, and over time they developed a business serving the lake estates and summer homes of families from "in town." In these pages Steve Kelley, the third generation at the helm, looks back at a hundred years of the family's landscaping and gardening history, and also shares his thoughts on a variety of subjects, both horticultural and personal. Among the riches are contemplative essays devoted to gardening with all the senses, the pleasures of weeding, shopping for plants, compost, garden renovation, and working with garden light in every season. The book also contains plenty of specific information about plants, and draws to a close with a delightfully opinionated overview, drawn up by Steve and his wife, Arla, and based on a lifetime of work in the trade, of the "best" of everything from pruning shears to gardening hats.

Steve Kelley is the third-generation proprietor of Kelley & Kelley Nursery. For the last twenty years, in idle hours when not managing the nursery, he has enjoyed crafting essays for his annual publication, "In the Garden."