Resources

“The Opposite of Extinction,” Arnoldia, Summer 2024
Turning meadows into forests on Cape Ann. Nature wants more from us than potted plants and packaged seeds.

“Improvised Landscapes,” Arnoldia, Spring 2023
This was my first attempt to get at my perspective through narrative and personal history.

“Native Plants for Cape Ann,” Presentation for the Rockport Garden Club
February 1, 2021
I did this presentation after the first season of working on the East Gloucester project. I stand by it but my agenda and perspective have shifted subsequently.

Practical Books and Online Resources about Horticulture, Ecology, etc.

Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast
Peter Del Tredici
An essential guidebook for decoding the botanical world near the built environment. The introduction is something of a smuggled polemic. If I recommend one book on plants for novices in our region, it is this.

“The Flora of The Future,” Places
Peter Del Tredici
Similar perspective to the aforementioned introduction, and available online.

iNaturalist
Downloading and using the photo-machine learning function on this app can help anyone quickly develop plant literacy and get to know what’s growing around them. Indispensable.

The Biota of North America Program (BONAP)
By searching for any genus or species followed by the acronym “BONAP” you can see their distribution across the continent. This can be a wonderful way to gain a sense of ecological/botanical context. For example, googling “echinacea bonap” (without quotes in the search) produces this map.

Native Species Planting Guide for New York City
Natural Resources Group, NYC Parks
This is the third edition of this ambitious project (329 pages!). It’s an online PDF that contains vastly more species and practical information than are likely to be encountered anywhere else online in one place. There is a central premise that discernible ecosystems in NYC consist of plant communities that are described in ways that are somewhat teleological, and that strike me as problematic after centuries of colonial settlement and urbanization. I have a difficult time imagining how this document could be used in projects at scale. That said, it contains a massive amount of excellent information. It is intended for NYC specifically but most of the described species and plant communities are relevant more regionally. I don’t personally believe that ecological restoration (aspiring to prescribed, plant-community baselines) represents a realistic thing to be aiming for at this point in the anthropocene, but if it were to be attempted, a guide such as this would be necessary.

A Guide to Native Plants of the New York City Region
Margaret Gargiullo
Similar to the above recommendation but in the form of a book. Its not as comprehensive as the online PDF but it is my understanding that Gargiullo’s work largely underpins the research, format and methodology behind the subsequent publication from NYC Parks et al.

“The Lessons of a Hideous Forest, The insistence of wild growth at Fresh Kills Landfill should make us rethink nature,” New York Times (Opinion)
William Bryant Logan
A reckoning with botanical abundance—good, bad, ugly, beautiful and other—in the wake of the urban waste-stream. This piece is an important counterpoint to the edenic ideation that plays in the background of the two, previous recommendations.

Reading the Forested Landscape A Natural History of New England
Tom Wessels
This is a wonderful book for naturalists that is effectively an invitation to look at forested land in the mode of Sherlock Holmes to understand how it has been shaped by human history, ecological processes, and meteorological events. Wessels has also created an excellent companion series on YouTube.

New England's Roadside Ecology
Tom Wessels
This is a newer book by the aforementioned author that also has incredible YouTube companion content.

Sierra Club Naturalist's Guide to Southern New England
Neil Jorgenson
This book is out of print and presumably outdated in certain respects, but it remains a really important guide for anyone who wishes to gain regional, ecological context. It is a standout in the series and used copies are inexpensive and available for purchase online.

“Barbarians at the Gate: Our fear of invasive species says a lot more about us than the plant world,” Pioneer Works
Banu Subramaniam
A wonderful interrogation of the invasive plant discourse and its ties to colonialism, xenophobia and ideas of purity and perfection. I generally agree with the author’s analysis but think that there are additional layers at play, some of which are ancient and theological and some that are driven by algorithms and alienation from “nature” in modernity.

Planting in a Post Wild World
Thomas Rainer, Claudia West
This is the design/planting book that has had the most impact on my work even though I’ve departed from the idea of perfected plant combinations in favor of a “more is more” approach. Also I don’t generally purchase plants.

Garden Revolution
Larry Weaner
Similarly influential for me with lots of great information, but I feel these books can be overly intimidating to people just starting out. That said, lots of great photos!

The Wild Garden: Expanded Edition
William Robinson, Introduction by Rick Darke
This book is a fascinating gaze into a brilliant and obsessive mind of a man working around 150 years ago towards an entangled, naturalistic aesthetic that is very much “au courant” in many respects. That said, Robinson was doing this experimentally towards the creation of his own, personal Eden with species from all over the globe including Japanese knot weed. The esteemed horticulturist Rick Darke is an excellent guide and guardian of Robinson’s legacy.

“On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales,” Common Knowledge
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
This article provided a theoretical framework and methodological validation for my work with plants that I arrived at previously through intuition, observation and experimentation.

Native Plants of the Northeast: A Guide for Gardening and Conservation
Donald J. Leopold
Just a great, practical, horticultural guide to charismatic, native plants in the region

The Wild Gardener in the Wild Landscape: The Art of Naturalistic Landscaping
Warren G. Kenfield (AKA Frank Edwin Egler)
This is a strange book by a brilliant and cantankerous ecologist who created the most impressive, horticultural creations I’ve ever experienced at his home, Aton Forest in Norfolk CT. Egler died in 1996 but his meadows continue on and are simply mowed once a year. This book contains a great deal of practical information born of a lifetime of observation and experimentation in the land. His work is huge inspiration for me.

Native Trees, Shrubs and Vines
William Cullina
One of three books in a series on native plants by Cullina. They are now out of print and very out of date as “native” refers to all of North America and many regional guides are now available. That said, there is great, practical information and the prose is truly exemplary. Lovely photos as well and Cullina’s deep love for plants is infectious.

Tree (Object Lessons)
Matthew Battles
A wonderful invitation to explore and “un-know” something familiar that is often taken for granted. Battles is an exceptional thinker at the intersection of nature and culture.

Botany for Gardeners, Fourth Edition An Introduction to the Science of Plants
Brian Capon
I generally think that “science” is over-relied upon in the plant discourse and that it’s often used for the purposes of gatekeeping, but if anyone wants to dig into the processes of “how plants work” through the gaze of western science, this is a phenomenal book.

How Plants Work: The Science Behind the Amazing Things Plants Do
Linda Chalker-Scott
Another great and practical, science-based book along similar lines.

"Contaminated Diversity in ‘Slow Disturbance’: Potential Collaborators for a Liveable Earth," Rachel Carson Center Perspectives
Anna Tsing
I found this article to be something of a validation for my personal belief that we can make a better world for human and non-human beings by effectively starting with charismatic “weeds.”

“Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” Robert Smithson
Artforum, February, 1973
Just an exquisite dialogue between two earth movers with different aesthetics and agendas, separated by a century.