Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden

In conversation with William Baldwin. Emily Whaley's garden on Church Street in Charleston, South Carolina, may be the most visited private garden in the country. And no wonder. It is the life's work of a vibrant, sociable, opinionated, determined, forceful woman who has spent the last eighty-five years cultivating whatever life offered her. Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden captures and preserves Emily Whaley's distinctive voice and braces us with a clear understanding of how one might cultivate a practical personal philosophy alongside one's garden.

Emily Whaley was born in 1911 in Pinopolis, South Carolina. The mother of three daughters and grandmother of seven, she divided her time between her houses (and their kitchens) in Charleston, South Carolina, and Flat Rock, North Carolina. She died in June 1998.