The Nature of Nature: Why we NEed the Wild

In 2020, while the COVID epidemic was at its height and many people were dealing with the drastic changes that came along with it, Dr. Enric Sala released one of the more important books of our time. He is a former university professor who became disillusioned with how humanity has treated our oceans and other natural landscapes. Quitting academia to become a full-time conservationist and writer, he joined the National Geographic team and founded Pristine Seas, a project that combines exploration, research and media to inspire humanity to protect our last wild oceanic areas. This project has helped to create 22 of the largest marine reserves in the world, covering an area of 5.8 million square kilometers (which equates to a little over 2 million square miles).

To his list of accomplishments, he has added this eye-opening book that we will be reading as our first foray into the natural world and garden based literature, The Nature of Nature. This 272-page book makes a clear case as to why we need to care more about protecting our natural world, and how by doing so we can reap both economic and health benefits for all who live on our now fragile planet.

It may seem a bit odd that we've chosen this book to start with for our first gardening-based book club selection. The reasoning behind this choice is multi-faceted, but it really comes down to this: there is no garden or outdoor space on this planet that is not affected in some way by climate change and human-led ecosystem destruction. In order for us to truly, deeply understand how our private and public landscapes work, we need to focus our attention on the causes and effects present in our global habitat. To that end, let's get started.

Happy reading!