Book Shelf: Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden

As we head into what I’m thinking of as planning season (so excited), I’m cracking open the books. Over the winter, I’ll be sharing some of my newer sources of inspiration as well as some old ones I’ve turned to time and again for decades, but I’ve started with a read of the hefty new Gardenista book, Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden, because so much has changed in the years since I first took up gardening. As the author, Kendra Wilson, defines it in her intro: “Low-impact, nature-based gardening is about stepping away from old habits and thinking more about the life that our gardens sustain.” I was about to type that gardening itself — i.e., how to put plants in the ground and get them established — is more or less unchanged, while the thought process is vastly different. But actually, The Low-Impact Garden touches on some of the ways in which even the basics have changed, with new attitudes toward soil especially.

This is a fairly typical gardening coffee table book that also means to be a resource, but in this case all of the gardens and info are coming from a modern, ecological point of view. The book opens with twelve garden case studies — multi-spread visits to each one, with lavish photos by Caitlin Atkinson, a few detail shots and a write-up about the low-impact, ecological approach that’s being taken there. It’s not all meadows, although there are of course several (gorgeous) ones. The featured gardens are located around the globe — different climates and plant palettes and site considerations — and range from small backyards to multi-acre prairies to a community vegetable garden, with lots of variety in between. And each garden acts as an example of ways to think about and solve for various concerns, some of them more likely to be relevant to the average reader than others. The naturalistic swimming pond, for example, is stunning but strictly aspirational for most people.

Following the big case studies are additional chapters that zero in on various aspects (small space, play space, parking space) or components (grass, mulch, water) of additional gardens and gardening. And since it’s Gardenista, of course there’s also a shopping chapter. But it’s honestly kind of fun to look at a basically an old-school print catalog and not feel yourself being surveilled by anyone.

On the whole, I feel like it does a good job giving you things to think about if you’re not already thinking about them, and good examples of people trying their best to do right by the planet, the birds and the bees. As far as actual intel, it can feel like a bit of a grab bag and/or too light of a gloss on a whole lot of subjects. But at the same time, it left me with a few thoughts or topics I want to research more deeply, which is all to the good. On the whole, recommended!

EDITED TO ADD: It just struck me that the title of this book is all wrong. Those of us who care about the effects of industrialization and chemicals and climate change on the planet (and its occupants) are so caught in a low-impact/low-harm mindset. But these gardens — like any ecology-minded garden — are specifically meant to have a HIGH positive impact, aesthetically and environmentally. They’re designed to effect real change, to work with nature rather than against it, to restore biodiversity and support pollinators, who make food possible. How to make a garden without poisoning the earth is certainly a core aspect of it, but to stop poisoning the earth is itself a high-impact move, and ecological gardens have all kinds of positive impacts beyond that.

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