Paradise by Design: Native Plants and the New American Landscape

Like Phillips's previous book, Tracking the Vanishing Frogs, this series of essays on the moral issues relating to garden design explores the effects human interest has on the objects of its attention. Wild or native plant gardening is an increasingly popular trend, but its ramifications are not always the kind that logic might suggest. In using native plants, we hope to create ecologically sensible and appropriate gardens that are easy to care for. When the nursery industry responds with a furious backlash of recrimination, why are we surprised? Advocates for using as many regional natives as possible in public landscapes are accused of being plant nazis--and as it turns out, that appellation is occasionally correct. Nobody intended the native plant movement to trigger wholesale destruction of habitat in order to provide gardens with eco-cool plants, yet how many gardeners insist upon learning where their native plants really come from? Phillips's touch is light yet deft, and her reach is broad without losing focus. There is no strident anger here, but her interviews with botanists, horticulturists, designers, and gardeners address dozens of intriguing and complex issues. Few books this provocative are this fun to read. --Ann Lovejoy