My Wild Garden
Notes from a Writer's Eden
A colorfully illustrated round of the season in the garden of the best-selling novelist, memoirist, and champion putterer with a wheelbarrow
On the perimeter of Israel’s Jezreel Valley, with the Carmel mountains rising up in the west, Meir Shalev has a beloved garden, “neither neatly organized nor well kept,” as he cheerfully explains. Often covered in mud and scrapes, Shalev cultivates both nomadic plants and “house dwellers,” using his own quirky techniques. He extolls the virtues of the lemon tree, rescues a precious variety of purple snapdragon from the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway, and does battle with a saboteur mole rat. He even gives us his superior private recipe for curing olives.
Informed by Shalev’s literary sensibility, his sometime…
One of Israel's most celebrated novelists, MEIR SHALEV was born in 1948 on Nahalal, Israel's first moshav. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and his honors include the National Jewish Book Award and Israel's Brenner Prize for A Pigeon and a Boy. He died in 2023.
My Wild Garden
Meir Shalev
Two She-Bears
Meir Shalev
Beginnings
Meir Shalev