A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)

This is not a gardening book. It is a classic book on conservation. I at least somewhat consider myself a conservationist and thoroughly loved this book. One of the fun things I did while I was reading it was compare what the author thought should need to happen and what actually is happening now, 62 years after the book was written. There definitely is more progress being made, but we aren’t there yet. So go read the book.

One thing I though of when reading this book was related back to gardening. As gardeners we are stewards over a certain patch of land and I believe we can do of conservation and improvement on the land we use and own. I wrote a senior paper in college about it, which I put up over here. A lot of it is planting a variety of good plants: as gardeners we can preserve native plant species, along with a hoard of cultivated species that are useful to the overall ecosystem. We can create healthy ecosystems in out own backyards by cultivating a healthy soil, not killing off everything “bad” with pesticides, and planting a diversity of plants.

I’ve seen great examples of this in a few gardens I’ve visited or heard of. Botanical centers do lovely jobs. There is an occasional neighborhood garden I stumble across that is growing a lovely assortment of native plants. I love the certified wildlife habitat program. I have yet to do much myself–it is one thing I aspire to do as a gardener, especially when I have a little more to garden with. I want to garden with the natural ecosystem and environment, not ignore it or even worse, try to get rid of or change it.