Second Nature—a Gardener’s Education, by Michael Pollan (author of the recently acclaimed and controversial Omnivore’s Dilemma) is a sit-in-front of the fire, meditative, Walden-esque sort of a garden book—a sort of a how-to on thinking about gardening. A collection of essays calendaring a full year and four seasons of Pollan’s gardening in his rocky Housatonic Valley, Connecticut property in the 1980’s, the essays cover such topics as the moral imperative of compost, the sexual politics of roses, and one man’s war with a woodchuck. Second Nature presents the metaphor of the garden, and captures the cadence of the gardener’s seasonal engagement with nature. The writing is mostly light, fluid and often engaging or witty; only occasionally is it a bit unwieldy.
My favorite chapter (because it closely parallels my personal bias) is a reconsideration of the great American lawn. Pollan states (and remember this was published in 1991): “America has some 50 million square miles of lawn under cultivation, on which we spend an estimated $30 billion per year. To stand in the way of such a powerful current is not easily done.” He spent the first year with his own new lawn tending and mowing—4 hours or more per week. By his second year “the Zen approach began to wear thin” and by the third he began to remove lawn and plant trees and perennials. “I have not taken out my lawn entirely. . . but the lawn is shrinking, and larger and larger tracts of it give way to garden Yes, there might well be a place for a small lawn in my new garden, but I think I’ll wait until the hedge fills in before I make my decision.”
Not a reference book, or any authority on gardening, but as a chair-side companion to dip into occasionally, chapter at a time, in front of a crackling fire with a glass of wine or port, this is a fine set of essays.