Braiding Sweetgrass: How Robin Wall Kimmerer Teaches Us to Love the Earth Like Family
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
October 1, 2013
Dearest readers,
This day marks the release of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, the landmark book by Robin Wall Kimmerer that has since opened countless eyes and hearts to an ancient, profound way of seeing the natural world.
A botanist, plant ecologist, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer intertwines science with the poetic rhythms of Indigenous knowledge, offering readers a joyous and healing braid of stories.
On her website, Robin introduces Braiding Sweetgrass with these evocative words:
I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass, as thick and shining as the plait that hung down my grandmother's back.
But it is not mine to give, nor yours to take.
So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world.
In this compelling work, Robin invites us to recognize that gardens are not just material plots of earth but spiritual undertakings, embracing love as a vital element. Challenging the Cartesian divide that separates mind and body, science and spirit, she asks:
Well, how would you know it’s love and not just good soil?
Where’s the evidence?
What are the key elements for detecting loving behavior?
Her answer unfolds beautifully, paralleling the nurturing behaviors we recognize in human love with the companionship we share with our gardens:
Nurturing health and well-being, protection from harm, encouraging individual growth and development, desire to be together, generous sharing of resources, working together for a common goal, celebration of shared values, interdependence, sacrifice by one for the other, creation of beauty.
Observing these acts between a person and her garden, Robin proposes the striking and tender notion that the garden loves her back. This heartfelt reciprocity brings renewal, healing, self-discovery, and a sense of wonder.
As Robin writes in the book,
This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.
Such words remind us of the enduring power and wisdom that gardens hold—far more than earth and seed, but a living bond that nourishes the heart and soul.
