The Kinfolk Garden: How to Live with Nature

When I first picked up The Kinfolk Garden, I was impressed with the breadth of photographs capturing the many ways people engage with plants in diverse settings of gardens and in homes. Supplementing these photographic essays is text that is brief, but I found effective in capturing the individual and collective passions of those profiled.

Kinfolk.com describes itself as “a leading lifestyle authority.” Founded in Portland, Oregon ten years ago, it is now based in Copenhagen and publishes a quarterly magazine, social media posts, art prints, and several books including The Kinfolk Garden.

Aside from a few short sections, this is not a how-to book, nor is it about the plants to be found by trekking into nature. Instead, it gave me insights into the human drive to use plants for nurturing in ways both casual and immersive. This is a passion that spans all cultures, all climates, and all peoples.

An example is Ron Finley, who is described as a community garden activist in poorer communities of Los Angeles. He sees gardening as a way to foster self-sufficiency that “can also positively disrupt the social and political systems that perpetuate self-defeating cycles in low-income communities.”

Umberto Pasti, an Italian novelist, has embraced the plants and people of northern Morocco, developing a garden near Tangiers that rescues endangered native flora. He has discovered this also helps rescues the native people who, like the plants, are endangered by industrialization. More on Pasti and his work can be found in the book Eden Revisited.

The subtitle of The Kinfolk Garden is “how to live with nature.” I think a more complete description would be “how to bring nature, specifically plants, into everyday life.” Sometimes, the separation between human life and plants in nature is not very wide. Eduardo “Roth” Neira designed and built a hotel and museum near Tulum, Mexico and yet avoided chopping down trees in the dense rain forest setting. How to do this? “Build around them.”

Published in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2021.