"The author describes how she used the abandoned and overgrown garden behind the house she and her husband bought to come to grips with the recent death of her father and to awaken forgotten childhood memories,"--NoveList.

One day, Harper's Magazine editor Michael Pollan bought an old Connecticut dairy farm. He planted a garden and attempted to follow Thoreau's example: do not impose your will upon the wilderness, the woodchucks, or the weeds. That ethic, of course, did not work. But neither did pesticides or firebombing the woodchuck burrow. So Pollan began to think about the troubled borders between nature and contemporary life. The result is a funny, profound, and...

Presents advice on low-maintenance gardening, with tips for easy landscaping, short-cut composting, container gardening, and reliable plant combinations.