Are gardeners crazed workaholics?

Are weeds really plants whose virtues simply haven't been found yet?
Is the new rage for "wild gardens" merely old indolence hiding behind the shrubbery of political correctness?

These are just a few of the topics that horticultural humourist Des Kennedy tackles in Crazy About Gardening, a book first published almost twenty years ago and now reprinted in a series of thought-provoking and rib-tickling essays that lovingly probes the foibles and follies on North America's favourite pastime.

Des Kennedy is a novelist, essayist and veteran back-to-the-lander. The author of nine previous books, in both fiction and non-fiction, he has been three times nominated for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. He’s contributed many articles on environmental issues, gardening and rural living to a wide variety of publications in Canada and the United States, and has been featured on numerous regional and national television and radio programs. A celebrated speaker, known for his passion and irreverent wit, he’s performed at conferences, schools, festivals, botanical gardens, art galleries, garden shows and wilderness gatherings. Active for many years in environmental and social justice issues, he was an organizer of the successful civil disobedience campaign in Strathcona Provincial Park in 1988 and was recognized as a key supporter in the struggle to save Clayoquot Sound. In the ’70s and early ’80s, he lived and worked with two First Nations bands attempting to defend their traditional territories in north-central B.C. against industrial clear-cutting. In the ’90s he was a founding director of a successful community land trust on Denman Island. Des and his partner Sandy live a conserver lifestyle in their hand-built house surrounded by gardens and woodlands.

Des Kennedy's profile page