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Tue Mar 4 16:45:48 EST 2008


Advance Praise for Stalking the Wild Amaranth

"Not since Voltaire has anyone so eloquently proclaimed the
wisdom and the necessity of cultivating our own gardens.
Without exaggeration, herein lie the secrets of saving the
world.
And the greatest surprise is to find that so many of the
truths
have been at our fingertips all along." -- Roger Swain,
science
editor of Horticulture magazine and host of PBS's "Victory
Garden"

"For centuries gardening was taught and practiced for the
subjugation of nature. Today we are so conscious of crowding
out native species that a new garden ethic is emerging --
one in
concert with nature. Janet Marinelli's provocative book
gives us
a new view and the tools to further this revolution." --
Rosalind
Creasy, author of The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping

"Janet Marinelli is a masterful storyteller. >From ancient
pleasure
gardens, Versailles and Sissinghurst, to the cutting edge of
landscape restoration, she creates an engaging and
entertaining tale of horticulture and ecology through time
and
place. As we begin the new millennium, she illuminates the
dilemmas, opportunities, and responsibilities we face as
architects and tenders of the global garden." -- C. Colston
Burrell, ecological designer and author of A Gardener's
Encyclopedia of Wildflowers

"I loved Stalking the Wild Amaranth -- couldn't decide
whether
to ration myself to one chapter per day or race through
nonstop.
You'll know exactly why I took the path of least resistance
as
soon as you start reading Janet Marinelli's newest book.
With
her usual candor and purity of spirit, she has convinced me
that
my new garden in central Iowa can be as Old World formal as
I
might like and still be ecologically wise." -- Elvin
McDonald,
garden editor of Traditional Home magazine

"In Stalking the Wild Amaranth, Janet Marinelli extends the
horizons for gardeners and their gardens to provide them
with a
clearer vision of these vital locations where, in her own
words,
'...we nurture nature as nature nurtures us...' Threads of
garden
history, horticulture, and ecology are woven into a highly
readable narrative that gives both guidance and hope for a
fresh
approach to gardening that goes beyond mere aesthetics to
our
interaction with gardens as essential ecosystems. The result
is
a book which challenges the reader to be not only a
gardener,
but an informed participant in the living landscape." --
Henry
W.
Art, Samuel Fessenden Clark Professor of Biology at Williams
College and author of A Garden of Wildflowers: 101 Native
Species and How to Grow Them

"In Stalking the Wild Amaranth, Janet Marinelli enlightens
and
delights us with discourse on our gardening past. More
importantly, she gives us nurturing food for thought about
how
as
people who grow things we might become more effective
caretakers of all that is green and growing in the global
landscape that is our collective garden." -- Craig Tufts,
director
of the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Habitat
program
and author of Backyard Naturalist

"Marinelli's carefully collected information and thoughtful
analysis should be given to nature-deprived suburbia all
over
America!" -- Lorrie Otto, environmental consultant and
teacher/naturalist

The author, Janet Marinelli , April 10, 1998

I grew up on Long Island on a block called Garden Place.
Sounds like a perfect name for a horticultural soap opera.
Well,
ecologically it could have been scripted by Stephen King.
Grandma grew tomatoes. Dad mowed the lawn. Every Mother's
Day Mom got another pink azalea. Today, my childhood garden
looks like just about every other suburban garden from
Boston
to Seattle, with its golf course-quality lawn, clipped yews,
azaleas, and shade trees ringed by begonias. Across a
continent of breathtaking biological diversity we've planted
the
same two dozen plants. No wonder botanists are worried about
the long-time survival of about a third of this country's
native
species!My whole life I've watched New York City sprawl
relentlessly eastward across Long Island, obliterating the
natural
landscape. About ten years ago it dawned on me that as
wilderness shrinks and backyard acreage increases,the home
gardener's role in the current extinction crisis grows ever
greater. If gardeners are a big part of the problem, then
they're
certainly a key part of the solution. In fact, I'm convinced
that
humble gardeners will be the environmental heroes of the
21st
century. That's what Stalking the Wild Amaranth is all
about.

Seven years ago, I joined botanist Steve Clemants, my
colleague at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, in a search for the
seabeach amaranth, one of thousands of American plant
species threatened with extinction. Seabeach amaranth hadn't
been seen in New York or most of the other Atlantic coastal
states in its historical range for decades. Then, out of the
blue, it
was spotted on Long Island in the summer of 1990! Nobody
knows how it returned, though one theory is that its seed
was
washed ashore by Hurricane Hugo, which had lashed the
Mid-Atlantic coast the year before.Steve and I set out to
follow
up on reports of the plant's mysterious comeback. After
searching for days, we finally found it on the glamorous
ocean
beaches of eastern Long Island. The thrill of our discovery,
however, was dampened by the fact that the plant, one of the
rarest on the planet, had just been flattened by a
four-wheel-drive vehicle. For me, the amaranth suddenly came
to symbolize what is wrong with our attitude toward nature
--
and
with gardening, its consummate expression. Stalking the Wild
Amaranth is the story of my realization that contemporarary
gardening is out of whack with the theories evolving on the
frontiers of science and philosophy, and of my personal
quest
for a new ecological garden that nurtures a greater richness
and
variety of earthly life.

Stalking the Wild Amaranth is part detective story, part
scientific
study, part history book, part autobiography, and part
blueprint
for a new, ecologically wise landscape art. Above all, it is
a
story
that melds personal memoir and scientific inquiry -- I can't
think
of another gardening book that ends with a 14-page,
single-spaced bibliography in tiny type listing scores of
technical
scientific references. The cutting-edge science is brought
to
life
with anecdotes that trace my own growth as a gardener, how
my
personal ideas and ideals have been reconsidered. And unlike
most contemporary books about the state of the natural
world,
the book's message goes beyond gloom and doom; the fact
that I chose as a symbol the seabeach amaranth -- a gravely
threatened plant, to be sure, but one that reappeared
serendipitously in at least part of its range after being
presumed
extinct for 40 years -- tells you that this is ultimately a
hopeful
book. In fact, it's a gardening journey marked by humor --
ecologically sensitive gardening needn't be a dreary affair.
We
can do our part and still have flair and fun.

In a nutshell, what I mean is that when most people garden,
they
try to create a scene, an idyllic picture, an abstract,
almost
static
form. The fact that the medium is living, growing plants --
not
paint -- is almost beside the point. The basic assumption is
that
we humans are different and separate from nature, not a part
of
it. This nature-culture dualism, as it's been called,
ignores
some
of the central tenets of 20th-century science. To give just
two
examples: it ignores the principal theory of evolution,
which
 holds that people are descended from other animal species.
It
 also ignores another fundamental idea of contemporary
 science, the ecosystem concept, which suggests that nature
--
 ourselves included -- is inextricably connected not only at
the
 molecular level, as conventional reductionist science has
 implied, but at every level. In other words, what we do in
our
 gardens has a profound effect on the rest of nature.

 I think hundreds of years from now when people look back at
the
 late-20th-century, they'll see it as a time when we faced a
 momentous choice. If we decide to do nothing to stop the
 current torrent of extirpations, it will probably stand
among
the
 worst half-dozen episodes of mass extinction in the history
of
life
 on Earth. But unlike past ecological dominants responsible
for
 similar cataclysms of extinction, such as the dinosaurs, we
know
 what we’re doing. Which means that we can -- and should --
do
 something about it. How can we, in good conscience, let all
 these creatures slip away before our eyes?

 We've got to summon up the courage to play the leading role
in
 the evolutionary drama for which we, the most aware and
 self-conscious of nature's creations, seem destined.
Gardeners,
 with our centuries of practical experience in growing
plants,
are
 in a unique position to help save endangered species and
 natural communities. But in order to be able to do that, we
need
 to learn how to distinguish destructive practices from
creative
 ones that enhance the diversity and complexity of life on
this
 incredibly beautiful planet.

 The new ecological gardens are organic forms, part of the
local
 ecosystem, evolving from the site and climate, taking their
cues
 from native plants, but not necessarily hog-tied to them.
They
 nurture a diversity of species in a variety of habitats. In
more
 traditional gardening terms, they include a variety of
gardens
 within the garden -- from indoor gardens and outdoor garden
 rooms to wild gardens and water gardens. A true ecological
 landscape includes plantings that honor our own species'
long
 and fruitful relationship with the land, whether an elegant
formal
 herb garden or a patio edged with fragrant flower borders.
 There's certainly room on our properties for healthy,
 home-grown food. The new ecological garden also performs the
 vital task of reestablishing the complex web of biological
 relationships found in the natural landscape. In other
words,
it's
 a garden that acts like nature.

 About the Author
 Janet Marinelli is the director of publishing at the
Brooklyn
 Botanic Garden. She is the author of Your Natural Home and
 The Naturally Elegant Home. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Lawrence F. London, Jr.  Venaura Farm
intergarden.com  InterGarden
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden InterGarden
metalab.unc.edu/permaculture PermaSphere
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden/orgfarm AGINFO
lflondon at mindspring.com  london at metalab.unc.edu



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