Grow and Know - Book Thoughts - One Garden Against the World

By Stacey Churchill

January 15, 2026

I love to read, especially non-fiction.  In 2026 I decided to try to read at least one native plant or native-plant adjacent book each month and I thought I’d take you all along for the journey with me.  

I’d love to hear what you are reading in the comments, or if you are willing, you could write up a summary for us to post here on our chapter blogs - just like Ruth Landry-Stone has done.

My January read was a Christmas gift from my daughter:  One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury, the Wildlife Editor of BBC Gardeners World Magazine. Both Goodreads and Amazon call the book uplifting and inspiring.  I definitely found it inspiring but also a bit panic-inducing!

Kate uses her city garden and backyard pond to discuss the impact of climate change on plant and animal species.  The book is formatted as a year in her garden, taking you month-by-month through changes in her garden, her pond and her greater community; each chapter ends with a short focus on an animal species. 

It is obvious that Kate walks the talk as far as doing her part to combat climate change and she encourages her neighbors to do the same. Her personal angst and stress-level about the impact of climate change on her plant and animal neighbors is felt continually throughout the book.  

Her level of personal involvement is extraordinary - rescuing hedgehogs (oh, to have hedgehogs as native backyard critters!) and going all-in to keep a robin family’s nest safe.  She describes sitting at her windows with binoculars to keep an eye on mating frogs in her pond and newly released hogs.  She sets up night cameras to keep track of goings-on while she sleeps. Her level of obsession and her love for what she is doing comes through on every page.

You travel with her through extended droughts - and capturing household gray water from showers and dog bathing to keep plants alive - and through months of torrential rain. All the while you can sense her all-consuming worry about how her own land, plants and critters will persevere through worsening climate conditions, but also how the greater world will as well.  Her frustration with the lack of broader action is definitely something I could relate to.

But all is not bleak. She takes a weekend away and wanders through native forests where her spirit is fed. There is humor in the silly parts of life and in the characters she meets in her neighborhood - from her neighborhood women’s action group (named Gulls Allowed) campaigning against the “Drone Bastard” who flies his drone at nesting gulls - to the arrival of random toad deliveries because “we know you like them.”  There is the love of her good dog, Tosca. There is long-distance gardening with her mother and a new baby nephew.  

I spent a lot of time wondering why I was finding the book so anxiety-provoking, since we all understand the impacts of climate change and the frightening future we face.  I ended up deciding that I could see a bit too much of myself in both her propensity for moving plants around her garden like furniture and in radiating stress about the state of our world. The struggle to remain hopeful and positive in the midst of it all is real!  It made me realize I need to take action - and breathe! 

If you’d like some inspiration for what one person can do on a small city lot to improve the world, this would be a great book for you.  You will definitely want to dig a pond in your backyard after reading this - I sure do!