Listen to the Land

Listen to the Land: Creating a Southern Woodland Garden 

By Louise Agee Wrinkle 

Design Books, 2024 

Hardback: $40 

Genre: Gardening, memoir 

Reviewed by Jay Lamar 

Garden books obsess me. Books on trees, hardy perennials, how to attract wildlife, planting in shade, planting in full sun, famous gardens of the British Isles, white gardens, and native plant gardens, to name a few, take up space on furniture and floors, at arms’ reach for a spark of inspiration or a moment’s meditation on beauty.  

Sometimes, I don’t even read them as much as gaze with admiration and delight—sometimes envy—at the worlds created by gifted gardeners and designers: three-season cutting gardens, stone walls covered with fig vine, burbling water features, a grove of white-barked birch pulling the eye and the wanderer over a low rise. These are often gardens I can’t do: wrong zone, different soil or light requirements, too little space or knowledge, and no phalanx of horticulture majors to bring my vision to reality (strong back, anyone?).  

Then, there are gardens closer to home that help an armchair gardener see how rich our own landscapes can be. One such is Louise Agee Wrinkle’s garden, the subject of Listen to the Land: Creating a Southern Woodland Garden. First published in 2017 by Birmingham Home and Garden, Listen to the Land has recently been updated with a preface by James Brayton Hall, president and CEO of the Garden Conservancy, and rereleased by Design Books. This edition is timed to coincide with the release of a Garden Conservancy documentary on Wrinkle and her garden.  

Wrinkle first saw the property at 2 Beechwood Road in 1938 “from the back of a rented pony…when I was just six years old.” Her parents, Rucker Agee and Margaret Minge Agee, bought the “Jungle,” as they called it, and built a home. An avid gardener, her mother set about bringing order to the grounds. Many years later, after her parents had died, Wrinkle moved back to Beechwood Road, where she began her own reclamation of both house and gardens. Her first step to “establish ownership” was to remove a towering magnolia and open up “space and sun” for other plants. Later projects included moving the driveway, restoring her mother’s sunken garden, adding a Belgian fence (a lovely living sculpture of trunks and limbs), as well as paths, bridges, benches, special plantings, and much, much more. From the first, Wrinkle focused her attention on what fit the natural landscape and climate of 2 Beechwood. She writes, “Some pieces of land have more to say than others…. my garden, with its rough terrain and idiosyncratic character, has dared me to respond in (an)… unforced, natural way, letting care and respect be my guide.” 

Wrinkle writes she “never set out to be a plant nut.” Horses were her thing. But horticulture classes at Jeff State, a facility for Latin, and the enthusiasm of the Birmingham gardening community led her to become more involved and, eventually, a committed, visionary gardener. As an active and highly respected member of the Garden Club of America, the volunteer-based national organization that aims to “stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening,” as a board member at Aldridge Gardens in Hoover and the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and as a founding board member of the Garden Conservancy, Wrinkle has dedicated herself to horticultural education and preservation of gardens throughout the country. We are the beneficiaries of her commitment.   

The book’s superb photographs document her approach and testify to its wisdom. Along with Wrinkle’s engaging text, the book takes the reader by the arm for a long stroll through a place not so far away, inspiring us with what native plants in happy places can achieve. Listen to the Land is now officially at the top of my stack.   

Jay Lamar is a co-editor of Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging. She lives in Auburn.