The Accidental Garden

What is a garden? Must it be an arena for the display of human mastery or might it be something less determined, more generous, a handshake with nature rather than a clenched fist? These are questions that Richard Mabey, arguably England’s greatest nature writer, asks and considers in his new book, part memoir, part treatise. 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 at work yet. A wise and witty stylist, under no illusions but attuned to delight, Mabey locates in his small patch of planet a place to test assumptions, to inhabit other species’ sensoriums, to observe how myriad species establish common ground. “Be interpreters, scribes, witnesses, neighbors,” urges Mabey, “the welcomers at the gate.”