Benjamin Vogt - A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future

Praise for A New Garden Ethic

A New Garden Ethic is an outstanding and deeply passionate book. Benjamin Vogt makes it clear that we need to expand our notion of garden to include all interconnected communities of all voiceless flora and fauna. We must rewild ourselves, reconnect with all of nature, and expand our compassion footprint. As Mr. Vogt aptly puts it, It is time for daily wildness to be our calling. It is time for defiant compassion. This book is a game changer in an epoch I like to call the rage of inhumanity. Alienation from nature is bad for everyone involved. We all need to coexist under a broad and inclusive umbrella of compassion.

Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts and The Animals Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Age of Humans

Benjamin Vogt writes with great passion about how our increasingly urbanized societies have lost the connection with the original landscapes in which we live. Not only do our cities have a nature deficit, but in many cases the species of plants and animals we have introduced have been imported from geographies that do not represent the original indigenous ecosystems. This should concern us deeply. Our health and well-being depend on a strong connection with the natural world, and in particular on diverse communities of plants that have adapted to local climate and soils. The call to be conscious about what we plant in our gardens, and to respect the beauty and resilience of species that have been in our communities for millennia, is clear and urgent.

Dr. Peter Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, David Suzuki Foundation

Our managed landscapes have forced nature out. If we garden with native plants, we can reconnect with nature providing sustenance for our souls and for wildlife. Benjamin Vogts thought-provoking book, A New Garden Ethic, examines the historical, psychological, biological, and social reasons for why we urgently need balanced and equitable gardens that respect, support, and sustain all living things.

Heather Holm, award-winning author of Bees and Pollinators of Native Plants

Benjamin Vogt gives us more than food for thought with A New Garden Ethic; he offers an entire wild ecosystem for mindful action. A New Garden Ethic makes as persuasive a case as can be made for gardens as radicalto the rootsways of knowing the world and reckoning with our place in it. Vogt presents gardens as troubling sanctuaries of meaning, sites of ideological conflict, political statements, expressions of faith, places of cosmic connection, and dirt-under-the-nails realities of how we co-shape our world with other species. With beautiful description and insight, he explores how gardens can create social responsibility to a more than-human world that is constantly speaking. Even as a person who has considered and questioned my own gardening goals, prior to reading this book I never imagined gardening could be so radical. Now I know. Ill never again look at any garden, or the planet, in the same way.

Gavin Van Horn, Center for Humans and Nature and coeditor of Wildness: Relations of People and Place

Benjamin Vogt makes a great case for gardening with compassion for the earthits treasures and inhabitants. The treasure, here, are his words, and in rich prose, he reminds us that we wont find wealth and health for the future through destruction and consumption. He advises us to see our potential to be landscape stewards, to welcome wildlife, support and restore natural systems and in that way, enrich our lives as well.

Ken Druse is a garden communicator and the award-winning author/photographer of 20 books.

Native plant gardens matter! People, pollinators, birds, soil health, air and water quality, and our future are influenced by gardens. Vogt takes readers on a thoughtful and personal journey as he explores the power of gardens.

Jennifer Hopwood, Senior Pollinator Conservation Specialist at The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

In A New Garden Ethic, Benjamin Vogt lays out a compassionate and compelling case for welcoming nature in all of its messy diversity home to our yards, gardens, and domestic landscapes. This book is about so much more than gardening: Vogt shows how we can begin to heal our own wounds and those of our planet by opening ourselves to the value and beauty of the everyday wild, and the native plants that root us in place. A powerful and transformative work, written with honesty and grace.

Susan J. Tweit, plant biologist, restoration gardener, and award-winning author of Walking Nature Home

Copyright 2017 by Benjamin Vogt.
All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Cover art Benjamin Vogt.

: msurkamp;
rabbit75_fot / Adobe Stock

Printed in Canada. First printing August 2017.

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of A New Garden Ethic should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772,

or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers

P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada (250) 247-9737

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Vogt, Benjamin, 1976, author

A new garden ethic : cultivating defiant compassion for an uncertain future / Benjamin Vogt.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-86571-855-5 (softcover).ISBN 978-1-55092-650-7

(PDF).ISBN 978-1-77142-245-1 (EPUB)

1. Environmental ethics. 2. Endemic plants. 3. Gardening.

4. Human ecology. I. Title.

New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.

It is the writers duty to hate injustice,

to defy the powerful,

and to speak for the voiceless.

EDWARD ABBEY

Any genuine attempt by groups within society

to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance

based on romantic illusions

or an obstacle to be circumvented.

POPE FRANCIS

A work of art opens a void,

a moment of silence,

a question without answer,

provokes a breach without reconciliation

where the world is forced to question itself.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

Acknowledging our love for the living world does something that a library full of papers on sustainable development and ecosystem services cannot: it engages the imagination as well as the intellect.