“Every once in a while, a unique and wonderful book appears. [This] is one of those extraordinary books.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"What she captured with her camera is the depth of meaning that these gardeners intended.” — Washington Post

“Looking at these black and white images sometimes feels like dropping paper flowers in a glass of water and watching them expand. Vaughn Sills's images make the mind expand like a rose, fragrant with vision.” — Hilton Als

“The photographs and Sills' sharing of the gardens and stories of their creators, in such an extraordinary and beautiful way, testifies to a remarkable documentarian and artist, and a visionary capable of stepping outside the fences of ordinary aesthetics into a realm of magic.” — Oyster Boy Review

“The art was never easy to find, materializing like night blooms in the woodlands and graveyards of rural black communities. Vaughn Sills, a Boston-based photographer, learned to look near historic downtowns, on the black side of the railroad tracks. And yet, she said, she had put perhaps 3,000 miles on rental cars in order to find 150 traditional African-American yards and gardens. Many of these appear in her beautiful 2010 book, Places for the Spirit.” — The New York Times