Why We Garden
Jim Nollman
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Sentient Publications
ISBN: 1591810256

Cultivating a Sense of Place.

The spirit of gardening is a deepening connection with nature that transforms the gardener into an adventurer encountering lessons great & small, & a space in which a genuine healing relationship between person & place can be formed.

While it contains helpful tips from a Pacific Northwest gardener's decades of experience, along with musings on the “Zen of gardening”, Why We Garden is much, much more -- it is a meditation on all things green & growing in this gardener's gardens: their beginnings & purpose; their senses & effects, as he takes inspiration from the history of the written word, & global cultures..

Come walk with this gardener (who, by the way, talks to whales) as he plants a treeling on a San Juan island, that will live a thousand years, even as the forest all about is being clearcut... & get a glimpse of TIME as you've not known it before.

Come sit a while in his gardens while he opens us to the “temporal charisma” of the PLACE wherein we find our souls' resonance.

Come wander in this gardener's wonderings on the journey, rather than the destination, as he unearths the roots of our ancient yearnings about paradise, to our more recent ideals of utopia.

Month by month, Jim Nollman takes us out where the wild things grow, as spirit, mind & body come together in the most enduring of our ‘pastimes’ as we dig up healing, plant hope & harvest contentment.

Why We Garden is a mystery -- no matter where we do it -- atop highrises, in window boxes, on abandoned city blocks, or where the trees outnumber houses -- wherever we garden, that is where we unearth our souls & nurture our own unfurling.

Much to learn, to relish, to think on -- all year long, for the rest of our lives.

Outstanding! Why We Garden is for everyone who labors & ponders on this thing we call Life. It is also the perfect gift for your gardening friends.

More from Jim Nollman:
The Man Who Talks to Whales: the Art of Interspecies Communication
The Beluga Cafe: My Strange Adventures with Art, Music, and Whales in the Far North
The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet, & more.

More books about the inspiration of gardening:
A Writer's Garden by Ethel Pochocki
Leota's Garden: A Novel by Francine Rivers
Finding God in the Garden: Backyard Reflections on Life, Love, and Compost by Balfour Brickner
From the Ground Up: The Story of A First Garden by Amy Stewart
Grandpa's Garden for children by Shea Darian.
(07/03/05)

Rebecca