Elizabeth and Her German Garden

The Enchanted Book Club’s August 2024 selection. Elizabeth von Arnim’s vivid, humorous, and subtly subversive Elizabeth and her German Garden is one of the great garden memoirs of all time. As the wife of a stern German aristocrat and mother of young children, the irreverent narrator of this engrossing memoir escapes the societal norms and constrictions of late nineteenth-century patriarchy by becoming an enthusiastic amateur gardener. As she grapples with the expectations placed on her as a woman, wife, and mother, Elizabeth’s joyfully valiant commitment to gardening transcends the task at hand and affords her a level of independence that has inspired generations of devoted readers.