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The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan Read by Scott BrickDescription
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulop, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants have also benefited at least as much from their association with us. So who is really domesticating whom?
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Innisfree is a 150-acre public garden in which the ancient art of Chinese landscape design has been reinterpreted to create, without recourse to imitation, a unique American garden. At Innisfree the visitor strolls from one three-dimensional picture to another. Streams, waterfalls, terraces, retaining walls, rocks, and plants are used not only to define areas but also to establish tension or motion. The 40-acre lake is glacial, most of the plant material is native, and the rocks have come from the immediate forest.
- Season: Innisfree Garden is open from May 7 to October 20.
- Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM. Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, 11 AM to 5 PM. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays except legal holidays.
- Admission: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, $4 per person 4 years of age and older. Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, $5 per person 4 years of age and older.
- Telephone: 845-677-8000
