Heart & Soil

Book excerpt: Writer, environmentalist and gardener Des Kennedy has gathered together his best, most outrageous and most contemplative articles and essays of the past decade into a book full of playful wit and insight. Kennedy recounts one newspaper’s April Fool’s Day prank that had men across the UK buying heather in order to propagate a poor-man’s Viagra, expands on his trials creating a sod sloped roof, admits he once wanted to write a stump-puller’s guide to the universe and contemplates the dark beauty—and rat feces smell—of a voodoo lily. The articles are tied together with Kennedy’s assertion that gardening is a revolutionary act of maintaining harmony with nature that intertwines the human spirit with the natural world. A book that will appeal to any who admire earth’s raw beauty, Heart and Soil is a collection from a respected Canadian who has dedicated his life to protecting and respecting the environment, cultivating his passion with a healthy sprinkling of humour.