In 2021, JoeAnn Hart reviewed a powerful book in which every landowner has a role to play in leaving this planet a bit better than they found it.
As a gardener and garden writer, I thought I knew all about native plants, but Tallamy in his excellent book Nature’s Best Hope was an education. He writes from the grim perspective that we will not survive the demise of the natural world, and yet it is full of hope because he has a plan. His proposal is this: What if each American landowner made it a goal to convert half their lawn to productive native plant communities? It could restore 20 million acres of what is now ecological wasteland. It would be the country’s largest park system.
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the Tasmanian mystery Devils Island. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
