Iowa author writes about gardening

Spring seems a long way away, but an Iowa author’s signing books today (Saturday) at the Adel library to remind people of sunnier days. Debra Landwehr Engle from Winterset is a free-lance writer for magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Country Home. Engle says she got the idea for her recent book, “Grace from the Garden; Changing the World One Garden at a Time,” while working on a column for Country Gardens. “There are a lot of people around the country who really had interesting stories of things they were doing in their communities through gardening,” she says and she decided to write a book to tell the stories in a bigger way. The book contains a number of inspirational stories about people using their passion for gardening to help others, like creating a garden for nursing-home patients or starting an inner-city community plot. She says there are some great gardeners out there, and some who aren’t that great but see a need and want to take care of it, to help people in some way. Engle’s book was published in 2003 by Rodale Publishing.