Set in the tiny village of Orient, Long Island, and in New York City, "Into the Garden with Charles" is a memoir about falling in love. As a boy in suburban New York in the 1940s, Clyde Phillip Wachsberger daydreams about storybook gardens where magic happens under the huge leaves. Through the 1960s and 1970s, when most gay men disdained monogamy, the author - an artist and set designer in New York City - searches unsuccessfully for a soul mate. In 1983, approaching middle age and having given up on finding love, he moves to a three-hundred year- old house on a third of an acre, where he channels his passion into creating a garden appropriate to his historical home. Then remarkable circumstances lead him to Charles - a connoisseur of art, a gardener, and the man who will become his life partner. Together they create a garden of sensuous wild beauty.