The Nature of Things

Deep-Rooted Wisdom: Skills and Stories from Generations of Gardeners by Augustus Jenkins Farmer My rating: 3 of 5 stars Augustus Jenkins Farmer, known to his friends as "Jenks," gardens in South Carolina, using the traditional skills and techniques he learned from his parents as a child and later from a large cast of teachers and mentors who had, in their turn, learned from generations of gardeners. In a straightforward and engaging style, he writes about what he has learned from all of them and from his own experience. He espouses a model of gardening that is quite different from the corporate-driven one that we see in many slick gardening magazines and in television commercials for weed killers, insecticides, and manufactured fertilizers. It is a kinder and gentler way of gardening, one that is in harmony with Nature. He writes about the basics of his kind of gardening, which starts with building a fertile soil to encourage a healthy web of life. He goes on to discuss harn...