The Accidental Garden - by Richard Mabey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

One of Britain's greatest nature writers blends horticulture with philosophy in this intimate memoir about gardening, rewilding, and a path forward amid climate change.

What is a garden? Is it an arena for the display of human mastery or might it be something less determined, more generous? These are questions that Richard Mabey, arguably England's greatest nature writer, considers in his new book, The Accidental Garden. From the pressing surrounds of the inventive, half-wild garden that Mabey, an instinctive rewilder, and his partner Polly, a determined grower, have shared for two decades, Mabey weighs past hopes and visions against the environmental emergency of the present. In beeches and bush crickets he sees proof of adaptation and survival; in commons and meadows he finds natural processes still at work. A wise and witty stylist, Mabey locates in his small patch of the planet a place to test assumptions and to observe how myriad species establish common ground.

Review Quotes

"This is a small book of big ideas written in 'sharply observed detail' by a writer who honors the fusion of the domesticated and the wild. In this era of unease and uncertainty, The Accidental Garden offers elegant lines of carefully tilled ground that shows change as the caretaker of attention. I am grateful for Mr. Mabey's garden of vast literary references rooted in rich soil that invite all of us to 'be interpreters, scribes, witnesses, neighbours' to what is real and true, and enduring: hands on the Earth." --Terry Tempest Williams

"This is obviously a meditation on place, but also--crucially--on time. On how we respond, practically but also morally and emotionally, to the accelerating change around us. A classic for this moment." --Bill McKibben

"In a fraught and noisy world, the quiet, observant voice is precious. The voice that says, 'Look, here is a cricket, alive and wondrous. Here is a wild rose.' There is no such voice more elegant, more to be trusted, than Richard Mabey's." --David Quammen

"The Accidental Garden contains such things as an enchanting meditation on varieties of roses, a foray into the history of the enclosure movement and a discussion of the moral permissibility of importing non-native plants . . . But perhaps above all, The Accidental Garden is a work of ecological philosophy--albeit one that is free of the penchant for abstraction that often renders the discipline ethereal or impenetrable. Mabey's philosophy is rooted (often literally) in the real, the material: in soil and fronds, in leaves and petals." --Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

"A calming reflection on the enduring resilience of nature . . . a discursive, philosophical memoir about everything from the human desire to shape nature to what Mabey calls the ambiguous experience of gardening in the midst of an environmental emergency." --Financial Times

"Delightful . . . The Accidental Garden provides an overview of Mabey's evolved thinking over a lifetime . . . Richard Mabey is the doyen of UK nature writing. --New Statesman

"Inspirational . . . meditative . . . an advocate for a new non-domineering understanding of the relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world."
--The Spectator

"This is part memoir, part naturescape and part gardening book. . . . There is also something much rarer in this book: wisdom. What a treat."
--The Times (UK)

"A crusade in defence of a natural world under threat . . . Mabey's powers of nature observation, and his gift for translating them into words has made [his work] both celebrated and timeless."
--The Sunday Telegraph

"A lovely companion to Olivia Laing's The Garden Against Time, The Accidental Garden sees nature writer Richard Mabey on fine form. . . . The light touch in his writing and his gardening allows for a delight in the everyday wonder of nature."
--The Observer

"Both instructive and exciting, often ecstatic . . . Mabey is a great, pioneering nature writer. This slim volume, packed with knowledge, insight and 'taste', is a beacon even as Mabey acknowledges that the 'minor victories' on his two acres cannot make up for the worldwide loss of biodiversity."
--The Irish Times

"Mabey offers a portrait of a landscape that proves resilient in the face of a warming world . . . Gardeners with a literary bent will be pleased." --Publishers Weekly

"Part memoir, part journal, part treatise . . . this slim book captures it all. A thoughtful, lingering read."--Geographical

"These are wide-ranging debates that cover the gender-fluid nature of plants, decolonisation, migration, native/nonnative, reparations for nature through the lens of the wood, the lawn, the pond and the flowerbed. I felt like I'd spent a great afternoon, lying in the dappled shade of a garden tree, listening to Mabey muse on a life with plants."
--Gardens Illustrated

"Richard Mabey writes with rare intelligence about the pleasures of the garden. This book is an eloquent and learned testimony to plants as "mordants, fixers of experience," and a sheer joy to read."--Alison Hawthorne Deming

"Mabey offers a portrait of a landscape that proves resilient in the face of a warming world . . . Gardeners with a literary bent will be pleased." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Richard Mabey is the author of over forty pioneering and prize-winning books on the relationships between nature and culture, including Food for Free, Flora Britannica, The Unofficial Countryside, Whistling in the Dark: In Pursuit of the Nightingale, and The Cabaret of Plants. His biography of Gilbert White won the Whitbread Biography Prize. Active in conservation, he has sat on advisory councils to the British government and is a regular contributor to the British press and BBC radio and television. He was awarded a Civil List Pension for services to literature and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives with his partner Polly in Norfolk, where they explore the county's wetlands in their electric boat.