When we garden with a mission of sustainability, driven by our conviction that plant (and all) life depends on vibrant soil health, we don’t always realize that we’re part of an alternative lineage grounded in an understanding that everything is deeply connected.
Mathew Ingram’s “The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture” invites gardeners to meet the legendary outside-the-box thinkers and growers who quite literally broke new ground and transformed our contemporary practices.
Ingram has compiled a history that’s fun to read, informative, and is a must for gardeners who want to locate themselves in the movement to make voluntary shifts, as individuals, that create positive change.
He says, “What’s important about soil is that it’s decayed organic matter alive with microorganisms…..in what amounts to a combination of some of our worst traits – ignorance, greed, pride, vanity, laziness, and impatience – we have messed it up. Messed it up along so many vectors that not only our food, but also our environment has suffered to the extent that civilization is imperiled.” And he profiles the people who created the movement to counter this, one that we are all trying to move forward.
He names his book after Joni Mitchell’s lyrics from “Woodstock,” “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” But he doesn’t start there – he traces a path from the nonconformists of the early 20th century who began to question ‘the new dogma’ of scientific agriculture, from Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner and biodynamics, England’s organic movement, Rodale’s initiatives, and Indigenous agricultural practitioners, through Findhorn, to Alan Chadwick, Dr. John Jeavons, Elliot Coleman, Vandana Shiva and so many more.
As you continue your own gardening journey, increasing your soil health, composting, planting native and water-wise plants that thrive in our Colorado conditions, this book provides a tonic for climate grief and for the sense that our planetary condition may be too difficult to take on as individuals. I came away feeling that today, we are the continuation in this line of gardeners challenging our notions of consensual reality that turn us away from action and onto the couch and electronic devices. There are many who have outlined a path for us. And we can take steps into, and co-create, a more sustainable future.
Harlequin’s has taken a leadership role in this movement – here’s just one example of the groundbreaking information that Mikl, our founder and co-owner, has offered during the past 33 years.
We’ve ordered 5 copies of this book, and should have them in-store in mid-July.