What We Sow Book

An insightful, personal, and timely exploration into the wonderful world of seeds. In What We Sow, Jennifer Jewell brings readers on an insightful, year-long journey exploring the outsize impact one of nature's smallest manifestations—the simple seed. She examines our skewed notions where "organic" seeds are grown and sourced, reveals how giant multinational agribusiness has refined and patented the genomes of seeds we rely on for staples like corn and soy, and highlights the efforts of activists working to regain legal access to heirloom seeds that were stolen from Indigenous peoples and people of color.

Throughout, readers are invited to share Jewell's personal observations as she marvels at the glory of nature in her Northern California hometown. She admires at the wild seeds she encounters on her short daily walks and is amazed at the range of seed forms, from cups and saucers to vases, candelabras, ocean-going vessels, and airliners. What We Sow is a tale of what we choose to see and what we haven't

Author: Jennifer Jewell
Publisher: Timber Press
Publication Year: 2023
Hardcover
392 pages
Product Dimensions: 6.3" x 1.19" x 9.35"

About the author: Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, gardening educator, and advocate. Since 2016, she has written and hosted the national award- winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, a coproduction of North State Public Radio in Chico, California. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of a garden- and floral-designing mother and a wildlife biologist father. A graduate of Harvard University, Jennifer has been writing about gardening professionally since 1998; her work has appeared in Gardens Illustrated, House & Garden, Natural Home, and Pacific Horticulture among others. She served as native plant garden curator for the Gateway Science Museum on the campus of California State University, Chico, from 2009–2018. She lives and gardens in the rich biodiversity of interior Northern California, on traditional lands of the Mechoopda Maidu people, hiking in the company of her daughters and her partner, John Whittlesey, whenever possible.