The Accidental Garden: Gardens, Wilderness, and the Space In Between [Paperback]

One of Britain’s greatest nature writers blends horticulture with philosophy in this intimate memoir about gardening, rewilding, and a path forward amid climate change.

What is a garden? Is it an arena for the display of human mastery or might it be something less determined, more generous? These are questions that Richard Mabey, arguably England's greatest nature writer, considers in his new book, The Accidental Garden. From the pressing surrounds of the inventive, half-wild garden that Mabey, an instinctive rewilder, and his partner Polly, a determined grower, have shared for two decades, Mabey weighs past hopes and visions against the environmental emergency of the present. In beeches and bush crickets he sees proof of adaptation and survival; in commons and meadows he finds natural processes still at work. A wise and witty stylist, Mabey locates in his small patch of the planet a place to test assumptions and to observe how myriad species establish common ground. This is a small book of big ideas written in 'sharply observed detail' by a writer who honors the fusion of the domesticated and the wild. In this era of unease and uncertainty, The Accidental Garden offers elegant lines of carefully tilled ground that shows change as the caretaker of attention. I am grateful for Mr. Mabey's garden of vast literary references rooted in rich soil that invite all of us to 'be interpreters, scribes, witnesses, neighbours' to what is real and true, and enduring: hands on the Earth. —Terry Tempest Williams

This is obviously a meditation on place, but also—crucially—on time. On how we respond, practically but also morally and emotionally, to the accelerating change around us. A classic for this moment. —Bill McKibben

In a fraught and noisy world, the quiet, observant voice is precious. The voice that says, 'Loolã6