As a child, Mary Nohl helped her father build a house along the shore of Lake Michigan just north of Milwaukee and was “happiest when her hands were busy making, building, creating things.” Mary grew up to travel all over the world and was captivated by the art in the places she visited. When she came back home to the house she’d helped build, she began to collect found objects on the beach, with the help of her dogs Sassafras and Basil. The things she gathered were part of something bigger—a creature she could see her in imagination. From cement, supports, and “odds and ends, bits and bobs,” a “magnificent creature” emerged in her yard. Wisconsin natives Tina and Carson Kügler introduce young children to one dimension of this unusual and brilliant artist’s immense creative outpouring in this engaging picture book. A note provides additional information about Nohl’s extraordinary art—her home and her yard were her canvas—and efforts to preserve it. (Ages 4–8)

While the rest of her classmates were making pastries in cooking classes, Mary Nohl was making art--anything she fancied out of anything she could find. Inspiration struck Mary even when she wasn't looking for it. Mary used common objects to make uncommon art. And one day, her garden was a gallery.

Mary Nohl passed away in 2001 at the age of eighty-seven. Her famous garden gallery is located in the front yard of her Fox Point, Wisconsin, home to this day.