I received this book free of charge for an honest review so I'll try to be as honest as I can. To begin with this book made me laugh and it made me smile. I've read a couple of downer stories prior to this one so it was refreshing to find something that held humorous satire and sarcasm. Lillian is a young widow with two small girls. She's an illustrator and her publisher wants her to do some illustrations for a new gardening book. To help assist her with the project she is assigned to a 6-week gardening class.

The story revolves around Lillian and the group of class participants. Each chapter is cleverly prefaced with a gardening tip for vegetables and yet alluding to the plot or predicament to be revealed. The story was a simple one, relatively easy to figure out the outcome for nearly all characters and therefore didn't require undivided attention while reading.

Besides the actual story, I did pick up some important and interesting gardening tips which I hope I can put to good use. As far as the story of The Garden of Small Beginnings goes, it didn't have a large impact on me but it did shed light on the fact that a successful garden is well thought out, planned out with a rhyme and reason to the layout and progress of plants. And if you look at your life as a garden, one would be wise to plot out the makeup of what you hope it to entail. It is best to start with small plans and graduate up when you can see and feel success. And in a garden, like in life, some things thrive and others fail. This story didn't fail for me, but felt more like a dandelion flower -- nothing special about it, and yet too attractive to destroy.