To The Best of Our Knowledge

from Wisconsin Public Radio

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The world is turning green again and it's making us all a little giddy! In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll pull on our gum boots and get out into the garden with novelest Jamaica Kincaid, who's grown a map of the Carribean at her Vermont home. Sharon Lovejoy, author of Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots, will help us get the kids involved. And Michael Pollan roots out the significance of the great American lawn.

Sharon Lovejoy is the author of several books that demonstrate neat projects you can do in the garden with children. She tells Anne Strainchamps about sunflower houses, the giant's garden, and why she sends kids into the garden with stethoscopes. Her books include "Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots," "Sunflower Houses," and "Hollyhock Days." Also, Michael Pollan remembers the first fruit he ever grew, at the age of four.

Michael Pollan is a writer and the author of the classic "Second Nature: A Gardener's Education" and "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World." He tells Judith Strasser where the American front lawn came from, and what it has come to symbolize. Also, landscape architect Anne Whiston Spirn tells Judith Strasser about Frederick Law Olmsted's revolutionary plan to use the processes of nature to clean up human damage to the environment in Boston's The Fens.

Writer (and gardener) Jamaica Kincaid tells Steve Paulson how she got into gardening, why she's driven to collect certain species, and why she loves so many British plants. Kincaid's book "My Garden" is now out in paperback. Also, Brenda Peterson talks with Jim Fleming and reads several selections from "The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World" — the anthology she edited with Linda Hogan. We hear excerpts from the work of both editors, Isabel Allende and poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Distribution dates:

• week of 08/18/2002 - hour 2
• week of 04/08/2001 - hour 2