Chasing Spring

A precocious child, author Ernest Wertheim became romantically involved when he was five years old. The object of his affection was the first crocus of spring poking its way through the winter snow. His love affair with plants sustained him during his early years and then through adolescence as a Jewish teenager in Nazi Germany. Follow his journey on a harrowing escape from Germany to his new home in America, and then across the Pacific to serve his adopted country during World War II. His encounters with notable personalities during the defining dramas of the twentieth century are adventures reserved for a chosen few, and he infuses them all with the flora and landscapes that a less impassioned eye would dismiss. The plants that captured Ernest’s heart as a boy still nourish him after a remarkable eight-decade career as a landscape architect and one of the world’s first designers of garden centers.