Category: Reviews

Cynthia Thayer and her late husband, Bill, are two of the early MOFGA members who helped to shape Downeast Maine’s organic farm community. They have been two of the faces at the Common Ground Country Fair: Cynthia in the Wednesday Spinners tent, Bill giving hayrides in a wagon pulled by his team of Haflinger horses.

After being inundated with too many tomatoes this past summer, I told a friend that tomatoes are weeds that have domesticated us. I might not be far off the mark. The idea that rye and other crops entangle us in long-term coevolutionary relationships is just one of the many plant strategies Zoë Schlanger considers in

“What We Sow” is a compassionate and insightful look at the human relationship to seeds throughout history. Jewell makes a compelling argument for the inextricable connection between colonialism, cultural erasure, and the loss of seed saving traditions due to the pressures of modern agriculture that will resonate with those already saving seeds, and may convince

Avoiding office work is the reason many of the farmers I know have chosen this profession. But no matter how well you can grow tomatoes and onions and lettuce, or how smooth you can talk up the products at your farmers’ market stall, the time you spend in your farm office is one of the

Rachel Siegfried, a flower farmer and florist in Oxfordshire, England, began her career as a garden designer for the National Health Service eventually shifting to growing vegetables, fruits, and flowers on an estate for private use. Six years later, growing increasingly frustrated that the beautiful flowers she grew were not available to the general population,

The award-winning author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Robin Wall Kimmerer, returns with another powerful meditation on relationship, ecology, and Indigenous wisdom. “The Serviceberry” explores gift economies, with Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea and A. alnifolia) as a guide. A member of the Potawatomi Nation, one of the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes region, Kimmerer knows Serviceberry as

The Land in Our Bones by Layla K. Feghali focuses on the plants prevalent in Canaan, the lands between Syria and the Sinai, generally referred to as the Levant. A core theme of the book that many herbalists may be familiar with is that of the concept of “plantcestors,” which are living links to past

“Wild Plant Culture” by Jared Rosenbaum is an in-depth exploration of the reintegration of native plants into our landscapes for both ecological restoration and practical human use. The book offers a comprehensive guide to understanding, cultivating, and utilizing native plants, emphasizing their importance in maintaining biodiversity, supporting wildlife, and providing sustainable food and medicine sources.

I love the buzzing sounds of pollinators at work in my garden. Sometimes I wonder how far they’ve flown, and whether they have a mental map of the flowers in the fields and gardens around me. In “What a Bee Knows,” entomologist Stephen Buchmann invites us to expand our curiosity and ask deeper questions, like

What immediately struck me about Ben Wilson’s “Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City” was the book’s front cover photo. Here is a many-storied, cement-looking structure in Italy, the Milan Vertical Forest, almost completely covered by green tree and shrub foliage. Is it apartments, offices, or a forest? Actually, it’s all