Several years have passed since The Garden Letters, written between these two friends from their respective gardens on Canada’s east and west coasts. Now, in a second foray into national horticulture, Judy Maddocks and Elspeth Bradbury travel from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland in pursuit of “real gardens.” These range from a soil-filled barge in Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay to a five-by-12-foot balcony arboretum in Halifax, with many more extensive cultivations along the way.

The pace of the book is slow to start, with some circling and backtracking for visits and book readings before we hit the road in earnest. Then it’s a bit of a gallop: the 80-odd gardeners blur, and the pictures – over 125 in colour and black and white – are essential for putting a face to a remark or a raised bed. The result is a sampling rather than a survey. Thus the gardening insights are ultimately somewhat superficial and don’t tell us a great deal about plants: “Quebec looks more lived-in than the rest of Canada.” Or, that those living further east have a greater tendency to plant everything – vegetables, flowers – in rows. And for some reason, there are no dates. I missed them, wanting to know as spring turned to summer when the lilacs bloomed in Saskatchewan, the rugosas flowered in New Brunswick.

The reader moves between Judy’s journal and Elspeth’s text, the tone of good humour and endurance in extremis consistent in both. Their style of getting from sea to shining sea by rental car is in itself intriguing: a diet of sardines and flatbread sustains them until the next oasis of good food and company. They survive downpours, honeymoon suites in cheap motels, and grim restaurants, like the one in which these committed nurturers watch in horror a man blowing smoke in his pregnant companion’s face. Along the way they report their findings via CBC Radio. They fight off recurrent bouts of gardeners’ guilt: they should be home weeding.

Both of British extraction, the authors are attracted to lush cottage gardens of massed delphiniums, climbing roses, and lilies. But their interests are broad and democratic: faced with plaster gnomes, painted rocks, and dahlia obsessives, they never once say “kitsch.” They are roused to eloquence by seeds with a past, history in the soil. They convey a humble amazement at gardeners’ energy and a deep respect for the perennial passion to plant, order, and care for reluctant ground. Finishing their book, the reader will reach at once for the telephone to order a load of compost.