Emily Murphy’s new garden book inspires “how we can save our health, communities, and planet — one garden at a time.”
During a recent interview with Kaitlin Mitchell about her new line of eco-friendly garden tools, she enthusiastically told me about a must-read for home gardeners: author Emily Murphy’s Grow Now: How We Can Save Our Health, Communities, and Planet — One Garden at a Time, published in 2022.
I quickly ordered it and dove in, barely putting it down. Here was a book describing everything I felt about my gardening experience. This book reinforces my belief that taking out my grass and replacing it with an edible garden, filled with native milkweed and pollinator-friendly flowers, would not only create a healing space for my family but for the Earth.
This is not a steps-to-growing-tomatoes guide, but a book on how we can fight climate change at home, in our gardens, one flower at a time. It's about shifting perspective. It’s not enough for edible gardens to be organic and pesticide-free; we need to invest in our soil, create biodiversity, sequester carbon, and grow native, all from the comfort of home.
Grow Now takes us on a journey, backed by science and hands-on experience that highlights how gardeners are redefining the garden:
- Through the book, Emily Murphy offers practical tips on how to return our space back to nature (rewild), build soil health, create biodiversity, and grow beautiful, nutritious foods.
- She reminds us to be creative and work with our space, instead of pushing our garden to be something it is not. A rooftop micro flower farm in Berkeley is inspiring, as are her ideas for planting native plants in the forgotten hell strip (the space between the sidewalk and street), joining a community garden, or growing in containers on your balcony.
- She also delves into the philosophy that “gardening is climate activism” and a form of social justice right in our front yard. She shares how growing food in our own communities is “healing the bonds broken through environmental injustices.”
