New this year from Milkweed Editions is a must-read essay collection of powerful Black nature writing. Originated and edited by Erin Sharkey, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars is a stunning and needed anthology. These essays by eleven contemporary writers address the presence of Black people and their contributions not only …
Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, activist, author and orator, was also a gardener. In 1949 he published an article about growing pumpkins and in it he wrote: The ground was prepared –seed sown– and the planet cultivated by our own colored hands; and although the soil is American, it took no offense on the account of …
A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard By Douglas W. Tallamy Timber Press, 2019 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 …
Dandelions. Bull thistle. Kudzu. Japanese knotweed. Himalayan blackberry. From front lawns to woodlands, these are among the most despised of plant species. Species that, we are told, are hell-bent on taking over every square inch of soil, crowding out native species, ruining ecosystems, giving gardeners ulcers. But what if everything we know about weeds is …
When you hear the word “garden” do you picture something like this: Or do you picture something more like this: The fact that these are both “gardens” illustrates just how loaded the word has become over the years. And the fact a garden can be so many things made me curious as to how we …
What in the world could be inhumane about gardening? Plenty, it turns out, thanks to this beautifully produced and incredibly important book by Nancy Lawson: The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife. The Humane Gardener makes a persuasive case for rethinking conventional knowledge about what a garden or yard should look like and …
I thought I knew a thing or two about gardening. But since undertaking a rather intensive gardener training program I now know just how little I actually knew about gardening. I’m not alone. It turns out that so much of what we’ve been told about gardening and farming over the past few decades — from …
