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Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 2,850 ratings · 355 reviews

In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man’s place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. �As delicious a meditation on one man’s relations...more

Paperback, 258 pages

Published August 12th 2003 by Grove Press (first published 1991)

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The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

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Apr 04, 2008 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am an unabashed fan of Michael Pollan. Yes, it may sound strange, but in my esteem, he is tantamount to a rock star or a Hollywood A-lister. "But Rachel!" you may be thinking, "he's just a regular guy! In fact, he's just a bald and bespectacled ol' college professor!"

Despite these potentially legitimate arguments, I classify Michael Pollan among the ranks of the elite. So, when I learned that Michael Pollan published a book about gardening in the early 1990's, I seized the opportunity to get a...more I am an unabashed fan of Michael Pollan. Yes, it may sound strange, but in my esteem, he is tantamount to a rock star or a Hollywood A-lister. "But Rachel!" you may be thinking, "he's just a regular guy! In fact, he's just a bald and bespectacled ol' college professor!"

Despite these potentially legitimate arguments, I classify Michael Pollan among the ranks of the elite. So, when I learned that Michael Pollan published a book about gardening in the early 1990's, I seized the opportunity to get a glimpse of my fave author's early years. And, as the book jacket promises, Second Nature is likely to be the most intensive - and perhaps the only - modern foray into the mind of a gardner that has been successfully reduced to print.

In typical fashion, Pollan begins this "education" with his own experience as a gardner, going as far back as the watermelon in his youth to illustrate his nearly gravitational and wholly instictual pull to the act of gardening. Pollan's love affair with his soil and compost is tainted only by a rash of complex feelings that accompany the domination of nature. Should he build a fence to keep wildlife out of his garden? Should he pull the weeds, or let nature take its course?

I won't spoil the outcome for you. But, suffice it to say, Pollan wrestles his demons to the ground and conquers them, all the while with a bushel of lovely organic vegetables under his arm.

Despite my general adoration of the man, I have to admit that the starstruck spell under which I was formerly operating has worn just a tad. While Second Nature does not defy Pollan's inate strengths - humor, artful prose, knowledge - it is also replete with Pollan's weaknesses - primarily, the redundancy and excessive philosophizing. It's sad, but I couldn't even bring myself to read the last 10 pages - partly because I had no clue what he was getting at, and partly because I was afraid I'd fall asleep trying to figure it out. I just closed the book and decided to call it good.

So, in the end, I would say this is not one of Pollan's finer works. It is good, I'm not dissing it. I'm just suggesting that readers stick to his more recent works, which have much broader appeal and much more immediate significance. (less)

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Oct 11, 2012 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, spirituality-philosophy, nature-plants-gardens, read-in-2012, author-north-american

I've been a gardener my whole life and so was delighted with Michael Pollan's story of his experiences with gardening and the endless struggles we go through as nature does its best to undo our every effort. A great read and a true gem of a meditation on gardens and the human spirit.

After 2012:

This is my third read of Second Nature. Once again I'm impressed by Pollan's ability to weave personal history with past and present theories/ideas/politics of gardens and our changing attitudes towards th...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Ken-ichi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gardening, nature, environmentalism, environmental-ethics

All Pollan's books explore the ways people relate to the world around them, from plants to food in general to space itself. This one's about gardens and gardening, and is probably the book in which he most explicitly addresses man's relationship to nature.

The oft-repeated thesis of this book is that all American concepts of the physical world and our place in it stress a division between nature and culture, and that while this notion has been useful in its various forms (Puritan establishment to...more All Pollan's books explore the ways people relate to the world around them, from plants to food in general to space itself. This one's about gardens and gardening, and is probably the book in which he most explicitly addresses man's relationship to nature.

The oft-repeated thesis of this book is that all American concepts of the physical world and our place in it stress a division between nature and culture, and that while this notion has been useful in its various forms (Puritan establishment to the Wilderness Act), the present demands a more holistic metaphor to guide us. Pollan proposes the garden as this metaphor, a place where humanity must both acknowledge impotence in the face of white flies and early frosts, while at the same time assert its own history, culture, and opinion in order to harvest tomatoes, appreciate a dahlia, or feel fully at peace. He explores this idea by examining various aspects of the conceptual garden and his own real, cultivated corner of Connecticut, dealing variously with vegetables, lawns, seed catalogs, weeds, etc.

My reactions to Pollan's work are remarkably consistent: fascination; admiration for the quantity and diversity of historical, literary, and scientific references he can apply in his analysis of almost anything; simultaneous frustration with his dogged refusal to cite these references in a regular fashion; and dissatisfaction with his failure to distinguish the personal shortcomings of scientists from the legitimacy of science itself (i.e. science as a good, if not the best, way of learning about the world). This book was Pollan's first, published almost 20 years ago, and it pretty much hits all these points.

That said, I also almost always come away from his books feeling enlightened, and more importantly, convinced. Honestly, he didn't really have to twist my arm to persuade me that romantic and/or radically preservationist environmentalism isn't a particularly useful philosophy if we want to survive the next 1000 years with both our world and our culture relatively intact, but I hadn't thought very much about gardening as a way toward a better mindset. Sentences like, "What we need is to confound our metaphors, and the rose can help us do this better than the swamp can" (p. 97) intrigued me, because I'm definitely more of a swamp kind of guy.

My main critique of this book is really more of a question: if the garden is the metaphor that best embodies our relationship with nature, what does it tell us about right and wrong? The garden teaches us to engage the world instead of dominating or kowtowing to it, but it doesn't seem to tell us why we should engage, and to what end. For instance, in his discussion of a local stand of old-growth pine that was blown down in a storm, Pollan describes the conflicting views of the Nature Conservancy land owners (leave it alone, let nature take its course), utilitarians (harvest and sell the wood), and romantics (restore the grove), and then offers some of his own motives for various plans of action (restore the grove to perpetuate the locals' relationship with the land, restore to our best guess at what the pre-Colonial state might have been so people can feel connected to the pre-Colonial experience). Pollan's garden ethic might encourage us to consider a more diverse array of options beyond entrenched commercial interest or the equally inflexible (and somewhat irrational) position of the Nature Conservancy, but it doesn't actually help us choose one path. There is no one true reason to garden, so garden ethics are not particularly helpful in decision-making. I guess Pollan might argue that his garden ethic isn't meant to be proscriptive so much as informative: the absolutism of our country's childhood and adolescence needs to give way to a harder, more self-conscious way of life, one that acknowledges that the most important decisions often must declare a new righteousness rather than adhere to an existing code.

Some Words

Maginot Line: France's fortified border with Germany in WW2, the implication here being that it was ineffectual. (p. 53)

antinomian (adj): Christian (Protestant) belief that faith alone is sufficient to achieve salvation. (p. 60)

secateurs (n): pruning shears. (p. 138)
(less)

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Sep 01, 2008 Mads P. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

A fascinating and informative read that goes way beyond gardening. Drawing from history, ecology, religion, literature, and philosophy, Pollan discusses how gardening addresses our relationship with nature.

Excellent writing style. For example, he entertainingly describes "the loathsome slugs: naked bullets of flesh--evicted snails--that hide from the light of day, emerging at sunset to cruise the garden along their own avenues of slime."

In addition to the lowly slug, Pollan addresses big topics...more

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Jul 17, 2011 Ammie rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are so many books I want to give four and a half stars to, books that are way better than a four--my fallback rating--but not quite as mind-blowing as a five. This is one of those. It's a collection of essays about gardening, but along the way it touches on everything from rose-growing snobbery (I'm a florist, and since I read this many people have received an impromptue lecture on hybrid vs. old variety roses)to how to negotiate the nature-culture split in a mindful way both in and out of...more

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Mar 12, 2008 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Although I am not a gardener--I joke that I have a black thumb, I do understand the attraction and love to walk through communal gardens and so forth. In this early book, Michael Pollan, known now for his two bestsellers on food (one reviewed by me), writes about gardening, the idea of gardens and the false dichotomy we make between nature and culture. A wise, thoughtful book that seems to me to reflect the attitude we need to deal with our environmental problems, from invasive species to global...more

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Feb 20, 2009 Keith rated it 5 of 5 stars

I like Michael Pollan, even when I sometimes disagree with him a bit, particularly in his lack of concern, at least at the time he wrote Second Nature, with invasive plants... I guess living in Connecticut he's never seen kudzu up close and personal? Anyway, Second Nature is about gardening, and the way gardening, and our ideas about gardens, interplay with our ideas about nature and conservation. Pollan takes umbrage both at those who would level and pave all green spaces, but also at those who...more I like Michael Pollan, even when I sometimes disagree with him a bit, particularly in his lack of concern, at least at the time he wrote Second Nature, with invasive plants... I guess living in Connecticut he's never seen kudzu up close and personal? Anyway, Second Nature is about gardening, and the way gardening, and our ideas about gardens, interplay with our ideas about nature and conservation. Pollan takes umbrage both at those who would level and pave all green spaces, but also at those who believe humans can never do anything but harm when they try to take a role in the world, even if that role is intended to repair damage already done. The garden analogy, put very simply here, is that when we disturb the soil and plant particular garden plants we create the opening for weeds and insect pests and such to grow in that soil, and to attack those plants, so if we want to keep our desired plants, we have to weed, and provide controls for pests (which can be those derived from mother nature's own toolbox, rather than the labs of chevron, etc...). Likewise, Pollan argues that, especially where humanities marks have already been made on the landscape, which is practically everywhere, the benign gardener role is a better one than 'no touchy'. Take for example the reintroduction of wolves to yellowstone, which happened after this book was written, but serves the point well. Humans exterminated the wolves in the area, and while it was an artificial interference (if you think of humans as one thing and 'nature' as everything else anyway, which is not a particularly healthy or helpful view) it has helped create a much more hearty, healthy ecosystem in the park, controlling elk populations (sort of like introducing ladybugs to a garden to control aphid populations, yeah?), which preserves flora, which is a benefit to other fauna and so on and on. Yeah, humans can be pretty dumb, and we've made a lot of changes that have harmed our environment, but if we're careful, and aren't terrified of getting our hands dirty, just maybe we can do some good, and the only hope for nature isn't the extinction or massive decimation of the human population (see: Jensen, Derrick).(less)

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Jul 10, 2012 Lynn rated it 4 of 5 stars

My father read this book and I asked his opinion of it -- he said, "If you skip the first chapter, the rest is great". So I decided to add this book to my to read pile and when I was recently ill ... it made it to the top of my pile. As you can tell by the books I have written about lately ... many books were read while I was ill.

This book was good -- and I even liked the first chapter. The first chapter was about how he got interested in gardening and that was because of the juxtaposition of hi...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Cortney rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was written back in '91, before Pollan came into his current status as a food ethics heavy hitter. I have read several of his more recent works- In Defense of Food, among others- and it was refreshing to read this book and compare his earlier work with his more recent. For one, I didn't realize he was such a beautiful prose writer. Nowadays he talks often of ethics and moral frameworks and principles of eating, and fleshing out his philosophy has given his writing a more "kindly professor"...more

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Jul 24, 2011 NJMetal rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Second Nature" is Michael Pollan's first book (and the last of all his offerings to date that I have read.) It is a book of the author's attempt to more deeply understand his connection to his gardens on his (now former) property in rural Connecticut.
The story travels from his boyhood exposure and fascination to his grandfather's suburban garden. It all culminates in a tour of his own gardens as an adult. Along that form he discusses the many stops we all take in our own gardens.
In typical Poll...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Elizabeth Wright Korytkowski rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow- very interesting read. While I thought that this would fall into my normal 'story-telling, environmentally aware' non-fiction, what I came to discover is that it is much more.

While I started out having a hard time getting into this book, by about 1/3 of the way through, I'd reset my expectations and came to find it truly enlightening and thought-provoking. It is much more than just non-fiction; it is philosophy about man's role in the natural world, couched amongst personal encounters with...more

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Jan 18, 2011 gina rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gardening, nonfiction, audiobook

This book was, erm, okay. Just okay. There were definitely parts that I really liked about it (historical overview of gardening in the US, Pollan talking about his struggles with his five acres, reminiscing about his childhood gardening memories). But, and this is a big but, each chapter felt like it's own book, with a wrap up that left me feeling like SURELY this should be the end of the book, only to realize there were a gazzillion cds left in the case to go through. When I put in the last one...more

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Nov 23, 2009 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This is one of Pollan's earlier books and it is fun to see his early thinking, ideas leading eventually to Botany of Desire (co-evolution) and his other books. This one looks at gardening and explores it as a useful metaphor for breaking the dichotomy between Preserving Nature (i.e. pretending that we are separate from nature and can wall it off from human influence) and dominating our environment (i.e. pretending that we can control it without ultimately destroying ourselves). He doesn't dwell...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Nomad rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: garden-writing, micheal-pollan

Yep, another garden writing book, for the woman who kills plants with the power of her gaze. Oh well... I'm just going to go along with my addiction... why fight it?

Micheal Pollan is a genius and while he's more well known these days for his part in the U.S. for food activism and helping to jumpstart the 'Real food revolution', this was his first book and it's about his garden.

I really enjoyed it and found him to be a fairly sarcastic voice in a genre full of pastoral, soft focus writers telli...more

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May 08, 2012 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks

This is Michael Pollan doing Michael Pollan things. But if you are considering reading this book the real question is, how passionate are you, really, about gardening?

I enjoyed Omnivore's Dilemma and I was fascinated by In Defense of Food and I outright fell in love with A Place of My Own. In my opinion, Second Nature was not as good as these works, but I would still heartily recommend it if you have any interest at all in gardening and you enjoy the Pollan style.

For the uninitiated Pollan takes...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Connie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: rws_spring12, virtual-books

I'm utterly convinced that Pollan could write a book about macramé, and I would buy, read and enjoy it, even though I can't think of anything less interesting. Thankfully, what he chose and chooses as his topics are all something I care about.
There was a lot to like about Second Nature, and a lot of interesting thoughts and concepts about what it means to garden, and what we can learn about interacting with our environment from the small scale. The book is build of 4 parts, one for each season,...more

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May 02, 2010 jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nature

michael pollan may be incapable of uninteresting writing. discerning and lucid, his works tend to provoke the reader to engage themselves (at least in thought, if not deed) well beyond the final page. second nature: a gardener's education is pollan's first book (now nearly two decades old), yet reads like a timeless work by a seasoned writer. while lacking in the overall cohesive force of his later works, this book may encourage more reflection and greater perspective. with his characteristic hu...more michael pollan may be incapable of uninteresting writing. discerning and lucid, his works tend to provoke the reader to engage themselves (at least in thought, if not deed) well beyond the final page. second nature: a gardener's education is pollan's first book (now nearly two decades old), yet reads like a timeless work by a seasoned writer. while lacking in the overall cohesive force of his later works, this book may encourage more reflection and greater perspective. with his characteristic humor, thoughtful exposition, and meandering style, michael pollan is always enjoyable to read. his distinctive voice is evident in nearly everything he writes, yet more importantly, he comes across as neither preachy nor self-righteous.

second nature, divided into four parts relating to each season, concerns itself with nearly every aspect of the garden. as with his other books, this one is part philosophical tract, part history lesson, and part autobiographical offering. pollan considers the very nature of what constitutes a garden (or a weed) and expounds upon man's historical and ongoing role as architect of the land. recognizing that attitudes and preferences have shifted across eras and continents, pollan considers and muses upon the temporal, ever-evolving relationships cultures maintain with gardens (as showy ornaments, sources of sustenance, and all points in between). second nature is a fascinating, contemplative read, one that will surely appeal to anyone who has ever considered, admired, or cultivated a piece of land.

...because it doesn't depend on technological invincibility. nor does it depend on the benignity of nature. it depends on me acting like a sane and civilized human, which is to say, as a creature whose nature it is to remake his surroundings, and whose culture can guide him on questions of aesthetics and ethics. what i'm making here is a middle ground between nature and culture, a place that is at once of nature and unapologetically set against it; what i'm making is a garden.(less)

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Aug 14, 2009 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of Pollan's earlier titles, I started reading this because for the first time I was to create and tend to my own little 10x10 garden this year. I figured having another perspective on this would be nice.

The book follows Pollan's own thoughts and musings on gardening in America. The main theme is that too often there are extremes in the environmental debate. Either we steadfastly preserve "wilderness" or we bulldoze the forest and put up condos. Pollan puts forth the idea that there needs to...more

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Jul 20, 2012 jess rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, growing

I haven't even read Michael Pollan's really famous work, but I always think of the Botany of Desire as one of the cornerstones of my perspective. I don't know why it took me so long to get to Second Nature. I'm so fascinated by humanity's place in the landscape and I like his style. In his typical style, Pollan brings a contemporary American ethnobotany to these classic garden icons.

Michael Pollan explores such items as:
his father garden vs. his grandfather's garden
roses, history, modern hybrid...more

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Nov 20, 2008 David rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone interested in gardening.

Shelves: natural-history, food-and-gardening

This book may not change forever the way you think about food, but I enjoyed reading it more than Mr Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. He starts off with stories of childhood experiences relating to gardening and quickly moves on to topics such as the angst of the suburban lawn, the ethics of composting, and the concepts of weeds, alien species and cultivation. He gradually builds up to his theme of gardening as a metaphor for how we view the natural world.

...it should be acknowledged that man o...more

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May 24, 2012 Manussawee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, nonfiction

This was my first Michael Pollan book, and I just loved it! He has become one of my favorite authors. I really enjoyed his writing style (blended with humors) and appreciate his passion on the subject. In one chapter he described how woodchuck was coming into his garden to eat his seedlings and his hesitation to use "unnatural" convention to get rid of the woodchuck:

A rodent whose brain could fit in a thimble might win a battle or two, but finally the war must go to the larger brain. ... What is

...more

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Apr 11, 2009 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own, nature-outdoors, food

If only I had a farm.

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Jul 29, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

If I simply called this "another great gardening book," it would do this book a mighty disservice. As Pollan, former editor of Harper's and now-author of numerous "liberal foodie intellectual" books, sets to work on his recently-purchased New England dairy farm, he sets forth a dazzling analysis of American culture in relation to land.

From the wild woods of Thoreau to the lawns of post-war Long Island, the reader gets solid history lessons. But we also get some surprising insight into the nature...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Margot rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, non-fiction, gardening-farming, 2010

Finished--FINALLY! If I had been reading Second Nature: A Gardener's Education in print, instead of listening to it on audio, I probably would have set it down in order to move on to something more interesting. Unfortunately, I must add Second Nature to the pile of, what I perceive to be, rather boring Pollan books, joining company with The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. (Please note that I consider The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Foo ...more

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May 04, 2010 Nicki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, non-fiction

One of my summer reading goals is to read through all of Michael Pollan’s work; so I started with Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, his first book, which was published in 1991.

Second Nature takes readers through the explorations, tribulations, and revelations of Pollan himself, as he works to leave his mark on his personal landscape. This is not a “how-to” garden book. Here you will not find natural remedies for warding off common garden pests, or how to produce more tomatoes per plant. Wha...more

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May 18, 2011 Christy B rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is Pollan's first book & you can tell-- in a good way. Instead of being a thesis-driven, repetitive argument for a lifestyle we probably already agree with (In Defense of Food, Omnivore's Dilemma), Second Nature is much more of a pleasant exploration. He discusses his successes and follies in gardening fruits, veggies, flowers, trees, even plain old grass. He uses his own personal history and experience and supplements it with a bit of US/world history to explain what has shaped our att...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Patti rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a great book. Not only did I discover several new garden supply stores, but I also was awakened to the oddity of the all encompassing front yards of grass throughout the US and how that came to be and how hard it is to break away from the tyranny to conform to it.

Pollan discusses the conflict between having a garden and allowing the weeds and creatures to live their lives and how we actually act as weeds ourselves in changing the landscape around us.
"Native grasses proved poor forage for Eu...more

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Aug 11, 2012 Charlie Armstrong rated it 3 of 5 stars

Second Nature is more a book about humanity's evolving relationship with nature than it is a book about gardening. It is well thought out and well written but I can't help but wish it had been a gardening book instead. It would have been such a good one! The problem I had with it was that the gardening stories were interesting and varied, the history was fascinating, but the philosophy didn't really hold my interest. He made his point in the first chapter and then proceeded to make it again and...more

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May 21, 2007 Carley rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: intellectual gardeners

A very heavy book about gardening - history, philosophy, ethics. Especially liked the bits about letting nature do it's thing versus our inevitable effect we have on nature. To weed or not to weed ~

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Apr 09, 2011 Julian rated it 4 of 5 stars

In order to feed my new addiction to the chaos and and "ambition graveyard" that is our giant, 1/2 acre backyard, I needed some intelligent reflection about what a garden might mean, and what it might mean to interact with nature in this way. I'm no way adept at growing things or the science of plants, and yet I've been finding an incredible amount of fulfillment from my minor efforts in the garden this year. And Pollan, through stories and precision, and a good degree of depth concerning the af...more

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About Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

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Books by Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

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“A garden should make you feel you've entered privileged space -- a place not just set apart but reverberant -- and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.” — 12 people liked it

“Mowing the lawn, I felt like I was battling the earth rather than working it; each week it sent forth a green army and each week I beat it back with my infernal machine. Unlike every other plant in my garden, the grasses were anonymous, massified, deprived of any change or development whatsoever, not to mention any semblance of self-determination. I ruled a totalitarian landscape.
Hot monotonous hours behind the mower gave rise to existential speculations. I spent part of one afternoon trying to decide who, it the absurdist drama of lawn mowing, was Sisyphus. Me? The case could certainly be made. Or was it the grass, pushing up through the soil every week, one layer of cells at a time, only to be cut down and then, perversely, encouraged (with lime, fertilizer, etc.) to start the whole doomed process over again? Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in the lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.” — 10 people liked it

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