Overview

Jack Phillips is a regular contributor to the regional journal Prairie Fire, and this collection includes 20 essays previously or soon-to-be published in Prairie Fire, with some new writing exclusive to the book. Phillips is a naturalist, nature writer, arboricultural consultant, and principal of New Tree School. He teaches and explores the best ways to grow, plant, and preserve native plant communities throughout North America. Noted ornithologist and biologist Paul A. Johnsgard writes in the foreword: I began to read articles by Jack Phillips long before I met him in person. I was taken by his knowledge of plants and of literature, his obvious great love for the natural world, and his ability to integrate the two... Like me, he is not ashamed to use the concepts of 'naturalist' and 'natural history' as a near synonyms of ecologists and ecology and to show appreciation for the writings of people such as Henry David Thoreau just as readily as he might cite the work of contemporary theoretical ecologists... Jack's repeated messages emphasize the values of learning to identify and plant native plants, rather than romantically named horticulturally brewed species that may look wonderful in a seed catalog but are genetically ill equipped to survive and reproduce in the Midwest's often stressful environment. It is an American truism that one should plant nothing but the heavily water-dependent Kentucky bluegrass in one's lawn and a fact that almost any native ground cover will evoke a city inspector's visit and warning about having 'worthless vegetation' present on one's property. In short, Jack's prescription for a happy environmental future is to plant seeds of native plants from local sources; find some acorns from wild oaks, plant them with care, then sit back and wait twenty years or so for the shade and pleasure they will eventually bring.

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