ON THE LAST DAY OF 2007, I MADE the life-altering decision to walk away from New York City and my job as EVP/Editorial Director of Martha Stewart, a career many would describe as highly successful. But I craved completely different rewards: solitude, a return to the personal creativity of writing, and a closer connection to nature and my first passion, the garden I had been making on weekends for 20 years.
I moved to a rural New York State town of 300, began AWayToGarden.com (called “the best garden blog” by The New York Times and named for my prize-winning 1989 book), and wrote my dropout memoir, “And I Shall Have Some Peace There.”
After I left my fancy job, I mostly sat at the old Swedish farm table (below), staring out the window, month after month—or at least that’s how I remember it. Somehow by the summer of 2008 I had a book proposal; by that fall a book contract; and a year later a manuscript.
“And I Shall Have Some Peace There” is the longest piece of writing I’d ever attempted (nearly 80,000 words, about twice the length of “A Way to Garden”), and also the most personal. It’s a book about dropping out, at midlife and in peak career; about trying not to be afraid about lost prestige or about money–or about snakes and electric storms and a collapsing economy and whatever else rattles my cage.
It is a story about starting to realize a dream I’d had for decades but always been to afraid to try for–-to live in my rural garden fulltime, and return to the personal creativity that got lost in my executive years in publishing. It’s a book about letting nature be the guide, finally, and listening to its signals; about looking for (and finding) some peace.
The title derives from a poem by William Butler Yeats that I have loved for many decades.
I’m the former garden editor of Newsday newspaper, and my 30-plus-year onetime career also included an editing stint at The New York Times. Today, I lecture and teach about what I call “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” and help clients create websites on the WordPress platform. I also continue to stare out the window a lot, as it’s still hard to believe I am here–and not back there.–Margaret Roach
(Author photo by Erica Berger.)
