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This Is Your Mind on Plants – A Gardener's Awakening

Spirituality & Health

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July/August 2021

Michael Pollan is the much-celebrated, much-discussed author of many books that explore the relationship between humans and what we consume, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma. His latest book is This Is Your Mind on Plants. It explores the relationship between humans and three plant products that have shaped human culture and history: caffeine, mescaline, and opium.

- By Stephen Kiesling

This Is Your Mind on Plants – A Gardener's Awakening

Is it fair to say that gardening is your spiritual practice?

It’s one of them, definitely. Gardening is where I engage with other species. I don’t have pets now, and that would be another way to do it. For me, the garden is where I either confront or cooperate with the species we share this world with.

When did you shift your perspective to a plant’s-eye view of the world?

I wrote a book with that in the title: The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. But that was before I actually experienced the plant’s view in an emotional or spiritual way. When I wrote that book, I had an intellectual sense that plants have a point of view—that plants have their own interests. Through coevolution, plants work on us as we work on them. When we mow the lawn, for example, we’re doing the grass’s bidding because grasses want sun and they can’t take down trees, and we’re very good at preventing trees from growing. So, in that sense, when you’re mowing the lawn, the grasses are using you as much as you’re using them. This is how coevolution works. But all of that was an intellectual conceit. I didn’t feel the presence of plants.

Are you talking about conversing with plants?

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