Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden

by Don Gayton

*Shortlisted for the 2008 Hubert Evans Non-fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose In the Garden begins with an intimate look at Don Gayton in his BC garden with his dog Spud. Striking a series of premises - the first one being that gardening is essentially an irrational act - he logically and humorously begins to unravel the work and rituals of gardening.

Engaging the reader with real gardening experiences, Gayton takes us on the microscopic steps of a gardening season and his interest in ecological succession. While commenting on the inter-reliance of species, types of soil, why weeds invade, how foreign planets appear, insects, disease and frost, he also speculates on gardeners - their needs to landscape, to purchase specialized tools, to use chemicals, to emotionally bond with trees, shrubs, flowers, and vegetables.

169 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Don’s writing is inspired by unique and wide-ranging life experience. Growing up on the US west coast, he attends a multi-racial high school in Seattle, followed by a hitchhiking stint around Europe. After two years of university he joins the US Peace Corps, working with peasant farmers in rural Colombia. Returning to the US in the late Sixties, he joins student protest movements against the war in Vietnam. Finishing an undergraduate degree, he works on cattle ranches in eastern Washington. Persisting in his opposition to the Vietnam war and the draft, Gayton and his young family immigrate to Canada, beginning a new life in Saskatchewan. After finishing his Master's degree at the U of S, Don works with small farmers on the Indian Reserves.
In 1990 Don and his family move to Nelson, BC, where he works as a range manager for the BC Forest Service. During this time he deepens his lifelong association with grasslands, and acquires a new interest in fire ecology. After retiring and moving to Summerland, in the BC Okanagan, Don starts a new career as a consulting ecologist.
Don's first novel, Columbia Son, will be published in summer 2026.

Reviews

[TheTyee.ca]

[Editor's note: The following is excerpted from Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden]

Landscape architecture was born amongst the estates and mansions of Victorian Europe, and seems inextricably bound to long, gracious sightlines, and a full-time gardening staff. There is literally nothing in the patrician history of landscape architecture that we 40 x 100 suburban wage slave mortals can relate to. Not yet anyway. What we need is a Leon Trotsky -- nay, a Che Guevara -- of landscape architecture, who can invade its aristocratic domain and pillage principles and pleasures that rightfully belong to us common folk.

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http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/03/12/Ch...

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Don Gayton’s Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden on my bus ride after gardening seems to make sense of some of my moral confusion. For a more careful, less eminently subjective, review, stroll on over to Book Addiction. For me, Gayton's methodical simplicity of approach, detail-oriented and focused on the experience of gardening, jives with my slow, mucky preference. He makes me yearn to compost, as an activity rather than an ideology, and wonder again aloud with MF at the regenerative power of severed worms, who, apparently, eat microbes rather than leaves.

This is an excerpt of a longer review. For the rest, please see my website, listed in my profile.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable book. Not especially focused, but I don't think it's trying to be.