From the eighth to the third centuries BC, the Etruscans were among the most powerful people on earth. They worked the metals of the Tolfa hills, laid roads for their carts and developed an excellent system of irrigation--criss-crossing their farmland with miles and miles of hand-dug tunnels. By the time American journalist Joan Marble arrived in Italy in the 1960s, Etruria had endured Roman invasion, malaria and the Black Death, the subsequent centuries of poverty leaving the area rife with impassable roads and political corruption. But Joan fell in love with Etruria, seeing it as the perfect place to grow a dream garden.The author found her calling at an early age, tending her first garden at eight years old. When she went to college to study landscape architecture she found that the details in the horticultural textbooks bored her. She chose instead to study English and eventually became a journalist, reporting on the Rose Garden at the White House. In Notes from an Italian Garden, Joan recounts how--together with her husband--she built a house and grew a garden in the most unlikely of settings. Her tale is told with a modest pride, the beauty of her prose evoking the splendour and grace of the home she occupied for more than 30 years. The book is also a study of the rugged people of Southern Etruria and the friends with whom Joan swapped plants and advice. It is illustrated with the charming drawings of Corinna Sargood, who visited Italy in order to see Marble"s creations firsthand. --Daren King