Category: Reviews

Plants, like people, are border-crossers. In “Dispersals,”Jessica J. Lee traces the histories of particular plants, and their migrations, over her personal and familial story of moving across borders. Through a series of deeply researched, immersive, and heartfelt essays, Lee explores what it means for both plants and people to migrate, and to belong to a

“Dark Waters” is a 2019 film, starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, about a lawyer who sues Dupont Corporation for poisoning residents in Parkersburg, West Virginia, through the introduction of PFAS chemicals to their water supply. Based on a true story, the film begins in 1998 when lawyer Robert Bilott (Ruffalo), who works for a

“Compost Science for Gardeners” is an introduction, a deep dive, a manual, and a decision tree all at once. It is a useful guide for those just beginning to learn about compost and for those with more experience looking to improve their practices. The first chapter introduces ecological and financial reasons to compost and clarifies

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