Garden Bloggers’ Book Club March Virtual Meeting

Welcome once again to the virtual meeting of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club! Settle in to your easy chair with your favorite beverage and snacks close by and join me in reading the reviews and blog posts for the the February – March selection, Second Nature: A Gardeners’ Education by Michael Pollan.

I will readily admit, as the “hostess” of this book club, that I had not read any of Pollan’s books before and so thought a good place to start reading them was with this book, since it was his first book.

I’ll also admit that I got a bit lost and disinterested in the story of Pollan becoming a gardener and didn’t find may way to the end of the book, where the good stuff appears to be. In hindsight, I might have enjoyed one of his later books more and perhaps should have read one of those first, which I offered as an option for anyone participating in this month’s virtual post. Indeed, I’ll likely read one of those later books this summer.

But we have several bloggers who did read or re-read Second Nature and offered a wide range of reviews.

Here are the book reviews I found or was made aware of:

Andrea at Heavy Petal

Carol at May Dreams Gardens

Old Roses at A Gardening Year

Annie at The Transplantable Rose

Bill at Prairie Point

KJohnson at Musings of A Garden Historian

Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening

Mr. McGregor’s Daughter at Mr. McGregor’s Daughter

Dee at Red Dirt Ramblings

Kate at Kate Smudges in earth, paint, and life

Beckie at Dragonflycorner

Pat at Commonweeder

If you are interesting in reading more about Michael Pollan, you might start with his website and then move on to his NYT blog.

Thank you to all who participated in the book club for February – March. If you posted late and would like to be added to the list, just let me know via a comment or email.

*****

April – May Selection Announcement

“I have learned more about horticulture, plants, and garden history and literature from Elizabeth Lawrence than from any other person.”—Katharine S. White in Onward and Upward in the Garden

Many of us read the letters exchanged between Elizabeth Lawrence and Katharine S. White in Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters, edited by Emily Herring Wilson, the book selection for February 2007. However, we have not actually read the writings of Elizabeth Lawrence, at least as a Garden Bloggers’ Book Club selection.

Let’s fix that situation by reading Beautiful at All Seasons: Southern Gardening and Beyond with Elizabeth Lawrence, edited by Ann L. Armstrong and Lindie Wilson. Don’t let “southern” in the title bother you if you are not gardening in the south, there is a lot to learn from Lawrence regardless of where you garden. In fact, Katharine S. White gardened primarily in Maine.

Or you may choose as an alternate book any book written by Lawrence or other compilations of her articles and columns including A Garden of One’s Own: Writings of Elizabeth Lawrence, edited by Barbara Scott and Bobby J. Ward and Through the Garden Gate, edited by Bill Neal.

We’ll wrap up the April – May book club with a post on May 31st linking all the reviews.

Happy Reading!