This is a notebook (complete with grid paper for planning, lined pages for notes, and pouches for clippings), garden-design and flower color-combination guide, garden journal, recipe book--in essence, it's an idea book, a place to record your ideas and learn from Roehm's. 

The grounds of her Connecticut home, Weatherstone, serve as the canvas for her botanical muse. In the course of showing off her gardening victories, as well as admitting to her failures, we get chapters on Roehm's potager, inspired by Louis XIV's geometrically laid-out kitchen garden at Versailles; her quest for the perfect perennial border; the extreme state of her hydrangea envy and rose obsession; details of a Fourth of July celebration and a summer wedding held at Weatherstone; odes to peaches, corn, and tomatoes; and an "end paper" on the dread Japanese beetle.