Second Nature
A Gardener's Education

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 legi......more

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......more

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......more

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......more