Booksigning with Ken Druse

Posted in People, Programs and Events, Shop/Book Reviews on November 5 2008, by Plant Talk

Love of Plants Is Natural for this Author
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.

We’ve always wanted to salute the body of work of Ken Druse, one of our very best garden writers; so the upcoming release of his latest book, Planthropology, was all the trigger we needed to schedule a booksigning here at Shop in the Garden on November 8, from 2 to 4 p.m.

Through his lectures, journalism, books, and designs, Ken has advocated a style of gardening that combines the beautiful and the ecological in a unique and important way. Long before the concept of “green gardening” was born, he was emphasizing an earth-sensitive design and horticulture that has increased in relevance exponentially over the years. Look at the titles of his books as he created this template: The Natural Garden, The Natural Habitat Garden, The Natural Shade Garden. He makes his case with an elegant, accessible prose voice and his own beautiful photography.

Planthropology: The Myths, Mysteries, and Miracles of My Garden Favorites is more plant centered and personal than his previous books. It encompasses history, botany, folklore, horticulture, and medicine, and illustrates the concept behind the neologism with a series of stories about plants and explorers, scientists, neighbors, artists, lost relatives, obsessive-compulsives, insects, and the author himself. Some of the plants he studies are the poppy, dove tree, fig, orchid, daphne, ginkgo, and one of my current favorites, the lore-laden Franklinia.

He emphasizes the “plantyness” of gardening in this book, because I think he senses with some alarm that, as technology and culture develop, the bonds that have always tied people and nature together are being pressured and pulled and might snap permanently. Toward the end of the book, he refers to the metastasizing condition of “plant blindness.” He recalls in a story about a Victorian girl’s childhood that not so long ago kids encountered nature naturally, as part of their daily lives, but especially in their play. In other books he has recollected his own ’50s suburban youth of walking in the woods and finding plants and building forts in oak trees. (That you inevitably fell out of and scraped your elbow and your mother sprayed you with vermilion Mercurochrome.) How differently we grow up today! Instead of becoming a naturalist and writer, Thoreau could have been joined to a joystick playing Grand Theft Auto for hours on end.

The New York Botanical Garden is a plant museum with a mission, and that is to make sure we preserve and protect not just the physical world of plants, which we do through our programs of research and conservation, but also to show that love of nature (what the naturalist Edward O. Wilson calls biophilia) is a fundamental part of our humanity. And that we do through our visitor experience of which Shop in the Garden (all the staff here are proud to say) is very much a part. So it is fitting that we have our fellow plant lover Ken Druse and his new book Planthropology here this season. We look forward to seeing you when you come to meet him on November 8!