Through colorful, personal vignettes, landscape designer Valerie Strong presents and solves specific landscape problems, including the excavations of her own ponds and the creation of three award-winning gardens. She comments on her natural surroundings, even empty lots and roadsides. Strong examines the neglected infrastructure of landscape design—the growers, carpenters, stone masons, landscapers, and labor force—with sympathy and humor, lifting the paper plans to philosophical observations of gardening and life.

All My Phlox will direct the novice gardener and confirm the habits of those who are committed to working with nature. The author passes on her message of how to be a good steward of the land.