Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

by Michael Pollan

In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. "As delicious a meditation on one man's relationships with the Earth as any you are likely to come upon" (The New York Times Book Review), Second Nature captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the outdoors in all its glory and exasperation. With chapters ranging from a reconsideration of the Great American Lawn, a dispatch from one man's war with a woodchuck, to an essay about the sexual politics of roses, Pollan has created a passionate and eloquent argument for reconceiving our relationship with nature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening, Food, Nature, Science, Memoir, Environment

258 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am an unabashed fan of Michael Pollan. Yes, it may sound strange, but in my esteem, he is tantamount to a rock star or a Hollywood A-lister. "But Rachel!" you may be thinking, "he's just a regular guy! In fact, he's just a bald and bespectacled ol' college professor!"

Despite these potentially legitimate arguments, I classify Michael Pollan among the ranks of the elite. So, when I learned that Michael Pollan published a book about gardening in the early 1990's, I seized the opportunity to get a glimpse of my fave author's early years. And, as the book jacket promises, Second Nature is likely to be the most intensive - and perhaps the only - modern foray into the mind of a gardner that has been successfully reduced to print.

In typical fashion, Pollan begins this "education" with his own experience as a gardner, going as far back as the watermelon in his youth to illustrate his nearly gravitational and wholly instictual pull to the act of gardening. Pollan's love affair with his soil and compost is tainted only by a rash of complex feelings that accompany the domination of nature. Should he build a fence to keep wildlife out of his garden? Should he pull the weeds, or let nature take its course?

I won't spoil the outcome for you. But, suffice it to say, Pollan wrestles his demons to the ground and conquers them, all the while with a bushel of lovely organic vegetables under his arm.

Despite my general adoration of the man, I have to admit that the starstruck spell under which I was formerly operating has worn just a tad. While Second Nature does not defy Pollan's inate strengths - humor, artful prose, knowledge - it is also replete with Pollan's weaknesses - primarily, the redundancy and excessive philosophizing. It's sad, but I couldn't even bring myself to read the last 10 pages - partly because I had no clue what he was getting at, and partly because I was afraid I'd fall asleep trying to figure it out. I just closed the book and decided to call it good.

So, in the end, I would say this is not one of Pollan's finer works. It is good, I'm not dissing it. I'm just suggesting that readers stick to his more recent works, which have much broader appeal and much more immediate significance.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment."
-- Michael Pollan, Second Nature



I'm pretty sure I'm now a Michael Pollan completist. This was Pollan's first, and as I typically read the first last, my usual brush with Pollan completism for now.

This book sent me back to days working in my grandmother's garden, my mother's garden, my wife and my first garden on our apartment balcony. It reminded me of wandering through Jefferson's garden at Monticello, Versailles, and the lilac gardens of Maui. Pollan was definitly influenced in his writing by Thoreau and Wendell Berry, but Pollan's philosophy in this book seems driven more by the pragmatism of William James. His basic premise is that the garden is the better metaphor for dealing with the current environmental issues confronting us; and the zero-sum-game debates surrounding development vs wilderness. I generally agree with a lot of what he says about gardens, trees, wilderness, and our need to find new metaphors for our relationship with nature that weaves together nature and man and man's culture together. He does tend to wax poetic. Pollan is basically a long-form magazine writter who, like John McPhee and others, figured out that narrative nonfiction can work in chapters made from magazine articles and confederate them together into a book. Not the best Pollan, but for Pollan fans, nature lovers, or gardeners, there is definitely enough grown in this book to feed all types.

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pollan mixes two of my favorite subjects in this book: philosophy and gardening and I like his thoughts!
Having just moved from a shady forest to a house with a sunny yard (garden), this was just the book for my gardening heart. One reason I picked the house we are in now is that I could see the roses blooming against the house.

Now to slow down and plan!

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delivered in an entirely conversational manner, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education begins as a gardening memoir but soon branches off into various relevant ponderings. The author’s own recollections of trial and error in the garden are one thing, but then there are all these insightful reflections about how industry and social currents have shaped over time – and continue to shape – agriculture and ornamental horticulture alike. The book turns 30 this year, in 2021. In most respects, I feel it remains entirely current.

It casually discusses, for instance, plant hybridization in a search for novelty rather than utility, the lawn as a social status signal, British standards in gardening versus American, our relationship with wilderness and the survival strategies of weeds.

While I suspect some of them may not exist anymore or would have undergone substantial transformations since going digital, the chapter on seed catalogues was probably my favorite. Working with a rich collection of them, how Pollan captured their respective attempts at market positioning was like candy to me. I could have read a whole book about it.

I used to garden as a kid – flowers, veggies, everything – and I can relate to a lot of what Michael Pollan brought to the table in this book. The joy of getting seed catalogues in the mail came only second to toy catalogues making their way to our home before Christmastime, back then. Nowadays, living up in the air in an urban downtown core, my gardening practice has taken more of an indoor turn but Pollan’s open-air inspirations lose nothing of their sheen for this reader.

Somewhat slow-paced without being sluggish, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education now paves the way for me to enjoy The Botany of Desire one day, a subsequent publication with more of a wow factor to it, by all appearances.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review disappeared as did almost all info showing that I have read this book twice. The only thing that exists are some reading progress notes from earlier this year when I read this memoir for the second time.

I cannot write a proper review, one that is worthy of this gardening memoir, but will write a few words on what I recall. As a new gardener ages ago I discovered this "gardening" book before Pollan became a household name. He's brilliant and funny as well as a great writer and thinker. He is like no other garden writer discussing the ethics and ecology of lawns, "pompous catalogs" and their promises (hilarious chapter), trapping vs. sharing his land with a woodchuck, sex in the rose garden, planting a tree, putting up fences, compost and much more.

Pollan first "gardened" as four-year old. He discovered a watermelon by the back fence in his backyard. He made the mental link to this watermelon and the watermelon seeds he had spit out in the same spot several months prior to this discovery. Marveling at what he had produced, he thought, "mom has to see this." He picked it up, tottered towards the house but drops the melon on the concrete where it splattered open. Pollan writes that "every garden since the has been an attempt to recover that watermelon and the flush of pride which attended it's discovery." (Thank you, Amazon, "Look Inside This Book" feature).

I am very much a biased Pollan fan. So, all I will say is that if anything sounds interesting in this thrown-together review, which does not do this book the justice it deserves, you may want to read this book.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a gardener my whole life and so was delighted with Michael Pollan's story of his experiences with gardening and the endless struggles we go through as nature does its best to undo our every effort. A great read and a true gem of a meditation on gardens and the human spirit.


After 2012:

This is my third read of Second Nature. Once again I'm impressed by Pollan's ability to weave personal history with past and present theories/ideas/politics of gardens and our changing attitudes towards the land we live on and with. Certainly not a practical gardening guide, but worth reading for all who wish to look beyond planting a few tomatoes or a casual daisy or two.

[gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was, erm, okay. Just okay. There were definitely parts that I really liked about it (historical overview of gardening in the US, Pollan talking about his struggles with his five acres, reminiscing about his childhood gardening memories). But, and this is a big but, each chapter felt like it's own book, with a wrap up that left me feeling like SURELY this should be the end of the book, only to realize there were a gazzillion cds left in the case to go through. When I put in the last one I actually gave a shout of rejoice that it was almost over! How can something with great tidbits of information be so blasted boring, feel like it's lasting forever... I stubbornly refused to quit listening to the cd, because see it isn't a bad book. Just something about it wasn't enjoyable in it's entirety. Only pieces were enjoyable. Unfortunately those pieces were too few and far between. And as a disclaimer- as always- reading and listening to a book often leave a reader with different impressions of the book. Perhaps a reader would not feel as if the book moved painfully slow. If you are a big Pollan fan then I'd suggest reading it. But unless you are a huge fan, or an avid and passionate gardener then I say pass on this one.

[Ken-ichi · Rating 4 out of 5]

All Pollan's books explore the ways people relate to the world around them, from plants to food in general to space itself. This one's about gardens and gardening, and is probably the book in which he most explicitly addresses man's relationship to nature.

The oft-repeated thesis of this book is that all American concepts of the physical world and our place in it stress a division between nature and culture, and that while this notion has been useful in its various forms (Puritan establishment to the Wilderness Act), the present demands a more holistic metaphor to guide us. Pollan proposes the garden as this metaphor, a place where humanity must both acknowledge impotence in the face of white flies and early frosts, while at the same time assert its own history, culture, and opinion in order to harvest tomatoes, appreciate a dahlia, or feel fully at peace. He explores this idea by examining various aspects of the conceptual garden and his own real, cultivated corner of Connecticut, dealing variously with vegetables, lawns, seed catalogs, weeds, etc.

My reactions to Pollan's work are remarkably consistent: fascination; admiration for the quantity and diversity of historical, literary, and scientific references he can apply in his analysis of almost anything; simultaneous frustration with his dogged refusal to cite these references in a regular fashion; and dissatisfaction with his failure to distinguish the personal shortcomings of scientists from the legitimacy of science itself (i.e. science as a good, if not the best, way of learning about the world). This book was Pollan's first, published almost 20 years ago, and it pretty much hits all these points.

That said, I also almost always come away from his books feeling enlightened, and more importantly, convinced. Honestly, he didn't really have to twist my arm to persuade me that romantic and/or radically preservationist environmentalism isn't a particularly useful philosophy if we want to survive the next 1000 years with both our world and our culture relatively intact, but I hadn't thought very much about gardening as a way toward a better mindset. Sentences like, "What we need is to confound our metaphors, and the rose can help us do this better than the swamp can" (p. 97) intrigued me, because I'm definitely more of a swamp kind of guy.

My main critique of this book is really more of a question: if the garden is the metaphor that best embodies our relationship with nature, what does it tell us about right and wrong? The garden teaches us to engage the world instead of dominating or kowtowing to it, but it doesn't seem to tell us why we should engage, and to what end. For instance, in his discussion of a local stand of old-growth pine that was blown down in a storm, Pollan describes the conflicting views of the Nature Conservancy land owners (leave it alone, let nature take its course), utilitarians (harvest and sell the wood), and romantics (restore the grove), and then offers some of his own motives for various plans of action (restore the grove to perpetuate the locals' relationship with the land, restore to our best guess at what the pre-Colonial state might have been so people can feel connected to the pre-Colonial experience). Pollan's garden ethic might encourage us to consider a more diverse array of options beyond entrenched commercial interest or the equally inflexible (and somewhat irrational) position of the Nature Conservancy, but it doesn't actually help us choose one path. There is no one true reason to garden, so garden ethics are not particularly helpful in decision-making. I guess Pollan might argue that his garden ethic isn't meant to be proscriptive so much as informative: the absolutism of our country's childhood and adolescence needs to give way to a harder, more self-conscious way of life, one that acknowledges that the most important decisions often must declare a new righteousness rather than adhere to an existing code.

Some Words

Maginot Line: France's fortified border with Germany in WW2, the implication here being that it was ineffectual. (p. 53)

antinomian (adj): Christian (Protestant) belief that faith alone is sufficient to achieve salvation. (p. 60)

secateurs (n): pruning shears. (p. 138)

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gardening gives most of us our most direct and intimate experience of nature - of its satisfaction, fragility, and power.

One of Pollan's earlier works, and it shows. While there is a larger theme of gardening, there is also a lot of navel gazing. I liked the narrative historical sections on different concepts of wilderness and nature, actually preferring those to Pollan's check-in on how his zinnias are blooming...

The strongest section of the book was "Planting Trees", discussing the history of trees and forestry. I found his story on the local land and conservation efforts to re-establish Cathedral Grove - a historic white pine stand in his small New York town after it sustained damage in a hurricane - to be the most compelling of the book. He touches on larger questions in this chapter, whereas many of the other sections felt superficial and ridiculous. The groundhog story was particularly maddening, and it lowered my respect for Pollan - I couldn't believe some of the stuff he actually admitted to doing to rid his yard of this rodent. It was shameful - and this coming from a gardener who has been frustrated by groundhogs for years!

So, some sections were great - 4/5 star territory, and others were awful. So, a 3 seems fair - right down the middle.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts with a discussion of American lawns, and made me think of them in ways I never had before. When I was a kid my family moved to one of the sprawling new suburban subdivisions with thousands of homes in your choice of one of four styles and three paint colors, each on its quarter acre plot. Whatever trees or other natural features had once been there were all gone, the area for miles around bulldozed flat as a billiard table.

And throughout that subdivision all the front yards were open and connected; fences and hedges appeared only in the back. A kid could walk for miles and never touch the street, which was just as well since there were no sidewalks. The yards were assiduously maintained, with fertilizers for the grass and deadly herbicides for the weeds. But, as Michael Pollen points out, these yards were just for show, symbols that the owners were respectable members of the middle class. The only thing I ever remember actually doing in the front yard was mowing the grass; any actual living, like cookouts or playing catch or sitting with the dog, all happened in the back yard. None of this ever seemed odd to me – it just was, and I never thought about it until I read this book. Now it all seems like a weird and implausible bit of middle class conformity, but even today you almost never see people doing anything in their front yards other than maintaining them.

This book is full of insightful comments that change the way the reader views things. Pollen has a way of connecting the grand philosophy of earth and sky with the actual hard work of maintaining a successful garden. One of the chapters is titled Nature Abhors a Garden, and he makes a strong case for that being true. The rich and fertile soil welcomes every weed and grass that can put a seed into it to take root, and the fruits and vegetables we have bred for our enjoyment are exactly the kind of rich sources of nutrients that every bird, insect, and critter in the area will be immediately drawn to. In addition to that, our plant breeding criteria have stressed taste or appearance, with hardiness a distant consideration, so most of our prized plants are weaklings which have no chance against the hardy wild plants unless the gardener is vigilant in his upkeep. As he points out, nature plays the long game, and always wins in the end; every garden plot eventually surrenders to the wild.

There are so many things that can go wrong between planting and harvest that a successful season comes as something of a surprise. Education and experience help, but even the best gardeners are subject to the whims of nature, and must accept their failures.“The gardener learns nothing when his carrots thrive, unless that success is won against a background of prior disappointment. Outright success is dumb, disaster frequently eloquent. At least to the gardener who learns how to listen.” (p. 121)

Even the humble compost heap takes center stage for a couple of pages of reflection on the transience of life, the old trope of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Pollan takes the perspective that gardening is a worthwhile metaphor for life: hopeful beginnings, sad endings, occasional joys and frequent disappointments, hard work, and the satisfaction that comes from living and learning.

For the garden is never done – the weeds you pull today will return tomorrow, a new generation of aphids will stop forward to avenge the ones you’ve slain, and everything you plant – everything – sooner or later will die. Among the many, many things the green thumb knows is the consolation of the compost pile, where nature, ever obliging, redeems this season’s deaths and disasters in the fresh promise of spring. (p. 132)

The books hangs on Pollan’s ability to connect hands-on gardening to the larger perspectives of life and nature, and it drags a bit when he leaves the garden behind and offers advice on developing new metaphors for man’s place in nature. He also provides an interesting interlude when he discusses how his town dealt with storm damage to a historic stand of trees. He considers the alternatives from a number of perspectives, although in the end, of course, the solution that was chosen was arrived at behind closed doors without input from the townspeople, and served only the interests of the corporate sponsors and one of the town politicians himself. No surprise there.

I haven’t read any of Pollan’s other books, though I have several on my to-read list. He has an engaging writing style and a fine ability to narrate his experiences in the garden, turning spade and hoe into physical therapy for the soul.

[mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written twenty-five years ago, much of what this book is about is as true today as it was then – because much of it is a history of the garden and gardening. It’s also, though, a contemporary study and self-analysis of the author’s one-year experience of putting in a garden(s) on his newly purchased (in 1984) five-acre, old farm, in Cornwall, Connecticut, with bits of social and cultural commentary sown in. Gardens are, he rightly point out, “a form of self-expression …” (p. 242) and Pollan exhibits this on nearly every page of this hundred thousand word “trope” of gardening. Trope/tropism is his favorite word and the metaphors are thick and heavy with much symbolism and lyricism. He also uses these words: perforce; concatenation; palimpsest; hermeneutical; and enjambed.

So who is Michael Pollan? You probably know of him and his writing. He’s sixty years old now and has written several best-sellers: The Botany of Desire (2001) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006); among others, as well as many essays that have appeared in major magazines. He is also a professor of journalism at UC Berkeley. This was his first book. Look at his author photo and he’s exactly that guy — an NPRish, soft-spoken (sideways talking) yuppie — a late-stage wannabee hippie, i.e. a whispering, obsessive compulsive, neurotic – the kind of person who can drive me batty with his metaphors, language, and self-righteous know-it-all-ness. But that’s just me. I actually liked the book, the historical parts anyway. I could do without all his assumptions and judgments, his, this-is-the-way-it-should-be-done perfectionism. All the while said like that’s not what he’s saying. And for all his earth-toney, ‘I-am-a-whole-earth being’; he doesn’t mention his cat until page 302! There’s no smoking, drinking, talking, relaxing, f__king, sweating, cursing, or eating, in his garden –things that I loved about my gardens, when I had them. In my mind the real fun of having a garden. What he does is sort of tell you things about himself, but he really doesn’t go very deep. But, he does have the “desk up in the barn loft.” Of Course, from whence he oversees his gardens. Can he be even more clichéd? But that’s just me. You’ll probably like this book, and Mr. Pollan, and his style of writing – it’s very popular. Very “eloquent, witty, and spirited.”

In short: Pollan’s prose and story is flowery – it lacks grit, true grit, the down and dirty stuff of real, but it’s pretty.

Spring 2015

[Mads P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and informative read that goes way beyond gardening. Drawing from history, ecology, religion, literature, and philosophy, Pollan discusses how gardening addresses our relationship with nature.

Excellent writing style. For example, he entertainingly describes "the loathsome slugs: naked bullets of flesh--evicted snails--that hide from the light of day, emerging at sunset to cruise the garden along their own avenues of slime."

In addition to the lowly slug, Pollan addresses big topics here including land use, genetic engineering, and other environmental issues.

He proposes a new ethic for environmental stewardship that views man's relationship to nature as that of gardener who is interconnected with the land, rather than the prevailing wilderness ethic. He posits that the absolutist viewpoints from which most view the land, with either a market aesthetic or a wilderness aesthetic, are not helpful to either cause.

A must-read for environmentalists, gardeners, and anyone who contemplates the American landscape.

[Kevin Buckley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This garden essay was like most of my gardens: teeming with promise at the start, becomes overrun with weeds and in the end, you're happy it's finished.

Couple fun chapters, there's a sense of humor here, that seems ready to unfurl like a spring tulip, but in the end, the cool weather keeps its glory at bay.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

why must he philosophize lawn care for 50 pages 💔

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

The central premise of this book is that humans should inhabit a cultural space between excluding themselves from nature and ruthlessly exploiting it, the conservation vs. dominion paradigms. The sweet spot at the center of the venn diagram is gardening, apparently.

Pollan repeats that humans should accept that we are a part of nature, but he goes about it by planting invasive species and treating his surrounding woods as a terrifying monster that must be beaten back.

Unsurprisingly he's driven by neither ecology nor folk wisdom, instead employing a bougie 'Western Civilization' lens that is at times unbearably smug and out of touch.

[oshizu · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. Borrowed from Amazon's Prime Library, this book (published in 1991) is not only the author's memoir as a budding gardener but also offers a historical overview on changing Western views of such notions as wilderness, what is "natural," environmentalism, garden design, the politics of seed catalogs, and much more.

[Anton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an early book from Michael Pollan. You can see the seeds and roots of his later books here. This is hardly a book itself. Each chapter reads like an essay on one topic or another: lawns, natural vs. geometrical gardens, dealing with pests, planting trees, etc. Yes, it is verbose, but in audio format, it is still utterly enchanting—incredible writing and narration by the author.

A kindred spirit to:
- The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
- This Is Your Mind on Plants
- Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Strongly recommended

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here Pollan describes a garden as “a middle ground between nature and culture,” and explores the philosophical divide between the two. The author writes of his grandfather’s half-acre garden on Long Island and of the summer when his father defied the neighbors by not tending to the lawn. He also chronicles the first seven years of developing his own garden in Cornwall, Connecticut: deciding on the right ratio between lawn, vegetables and flowers; figuring out how compost works; fighting groundhogs; planting a maple tree; and so on.

If you’ve read his more recent books, you know Pollan is always readable on the subjects of plants and food production, but I found this somewhat dry and too focused on historical rabbit holes, especially in Chapters 10 and 11 (“The Idea of a Garden,” based on a panel discussion on environmental ethics that he moderated in Harper’s Magazine, and “‘Made Wild by Pompous Catalogues’”). Still, it was illuminating to read in small bits over the year, even for a hapless and lazy gardener like myself.

Favorite lines:

“A case could be made that the front lawn is the most characteristic institution of the American suburb” & “Lawns, I am convinced, are a symptom of, and a metaphor for, our skewed relationship to the land. They teach us that, with the help of petrochemicals and technology, we can bend nature to our will. Lawns stoke our hubris with regard to the land.”

“Of the seven deadly sins, surely it is pride that most commonly afflicts the gardener.”

“Much of gardening is a return, an effort at recovering remembered landscapes.”

“maybe that is what a green thumb is, a particular form of memory: a compendium of little stories that have been distilled to the point where the gardener can draw on their lessons without even thinking about it”

“The garden is an unhappy place for the perfectionist. Too much stands beyond our control here, and the only thing we can absolutely count on is eventual catastrophe.”

[Vivian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, being an amateur gardener myself. I love sleepy gardening shows and wandering through hardware stores every spring. I picked up this book in anticipation of another growing season and even though it’s a relatively short book, I had to abandon it 50 pages in. The material is so dry. The author writes about having obviously grown up from a privileged home and how his white picket fence ideals didn’t fit tidily with the messiness of real garden, which should sound charming but just comes off pretentious and self indulgent. A total of 14 pages are spent on how he didn’t believe in fences, his defence against putting up a fence, and then finally putting up a fence. If this is the kind of riveting drama Michael Pollan brings to the table, I just can’t bring myself to continue reading.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread in 2023. My favorite chapter is "The Idea of a Garden," which somehow finds a way to examine all of our relationships with the physical environment through the lens of gardening.

*

The first of Pollan's books, I put this one off because I figured it would be uneven and because it was not easily found. I ultimately tracked down a copy through inter-library loan and I'm glad I did. It's everything Pollan's fans could want on gardening. While a lot of his recent work has focused on food, this one and A Place of My Own stand apart and are good bets for fans of MP's writing but are tired of the overlap in the food books.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated the Euro American and personal history but as an organic gardener, conservationist and former farm girl, I did not appreciate lumping the amazing diversity of styles, cultures and motivations into the homogenous idea of gardening in "our society". His definition felt very European-American focused. It left out much of our American diversity and history.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a relaxing read. Maybe I am alone in thinking reading about gardening while enjoying a social commentary about revenues and tibits of history makes for a great read but it was. The prose was delightful and I was often reminded of Bill Bryson way to got off topic but yet still be on topic.

I highly recommend

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great book about gardening. Not a how-to, more of an inspirational why-do. Loved it. Excellent writing.

[Norman Falk · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this book has one main contention, it is that gardening should be the ruling metaphor for what our relationship with nature (and consequently culture) should look like. The garden teaches us to wrestle with the tensions between the extremes of “domination and acquiescence”. Having done “something”, we cannot afford to do nothing to our natural landscapes. The garden should be “a place that admits of both nature and human habitation. But it is not, as I had imagined, a harmonious compromise between the two…It requires continual human intervention or else it will collapse. The question for the gardener—and in a way it’s a question for all of us—is, What is the proper character of that intervention?” (p. 49)

I was fascinated by his remarks on American suburban life. The suburb promises the best of both worlds, he says; the place where people “keep one foot on the land and the other in the city” (p. 10). Its “main characteristic institution”? The front lawn (p. 18). Since we moved to the US, my wife and I have been intrigued by precisely this – the many front lawns left unfenced that seamlessly extend from one property into the next one. It’s all about democracy, Pollan argues: “The front lawn symbolized the collective face of suburbia, the backyard its private aspect. In the back, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted, but out front you had to take account of the community’s wishes and its self-image...A single unmowed lawn ruins the whole effect, announcing to the world that all is not well here in utopia…My father couldn’t have cared less” (p. 19). As the story goes on, his father’s politically incorrect front lawn did not get unnoticed.

I was annoyed by the author’s consistent male generic language, a reminder that I should read more old books (this one was published in 1991). Also, gardening in this book is primarily depicted as an individual effort, not a communal endeavor. I don’t know too many things about gardening, but something seems to be missing here...awareness of non-western gardening practices, perhaps? (All his examples are either from the US or from Europe).

This book is pretty straight forward: one gardener shares his story and experiences in the garden. How complex can this be? Well, it turns out that Pollan sees all sorts of things below the soil, getting into philosophical musings, economics and environmental ethics, historical and political issues, cultural analysis, and occasionally even some spirituality and theology.

Through all of this, the eloquent and conversational tone is never lost. A delightful book.

[Stasha Neagu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narrated by the author, the audiobook is a very rewarding listening experience. We get a witty cultural and natural study of gardening, well researched through reading of both specialized and classic literature as well as through personal experience. The book rewards the reader in parts with the depth of reasoning and conclusions such as transferring the gardening metaphor along with the collective learnings from tending our gardens to how we could treat our planet and the natural world as a whole: humble, resolved to seek ideal but settle for real in our continuing grapple with the natural and civilizational forces.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using his own garden for context, Michael Pollan suggests that instead of considering nature as contrary to humans, we can see ourselves as participants in the natural world. The "garden ethic" values the changes humans make to the landscape in a kind of symbiosis with the land, just as birds build nests and beavers construct dams. It doesn't have to be all or nothing - a parking lot or a wild patch of brambles. We can make thoughtful, deliberate changes to our environment that benefit the birds, the bees, and us too.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

With thoughtful research and writing, and the incorporation of many of his own gardening experiences, Pollan makes a compelling case to say goodbye to the American lawn and hello to a garden. Not just any garden though. One that is gentle to the earth and its fragile ecosystems, and one that gives homage to the landscape’s past. I see many of his ideas in my future.

[em smart · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked parts of this book, but it just felt like i was reading the same thing over again after a bit. i put it down for awhile to read the entire harry potter series, and once i picked it back up, i remembered why i put it down.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Michael Pollan writing on nature and gardens.

Thoroughly enjoyable if you love these topics

[BJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, and many of the thoughts that were expressed mirror my own. I've only recently gotten into gardening this past year, but find it a shame that there isn't a larger presence of gardening culture in the U.S. in the form of books, television, and podcasts. We are highly reliant on British horticulturists, it seems, and I feel like we should have more garden societies as well as shows/conferences in the U.S.