The Garden at the End of Time: Getting by in the Age of Climate Change

John Hanson Mitchell has long written about his garden outside of Boston, and about the plants and animals with whom he shares this land. In 2022, the United Nations and others started reporting the true severity of the climate crisis as the Earth passed a point of no return. All across the globe it was the worst year on record for climate-related disasters, including extinctions, deadly floods, massive fires, and dramatic droughts. Mitchell, like so many, felt overwhelmed. He looked to the story of Voltaire’s Candide, and settled on the famous aphorism from that book: ＂We must cultivate our garden.＂

The Garden at the End of Time features Mitchell’s trademark blend of science, literature, and anecdote as he processes both the information he is reading from various sources and what it prompts him to do in his own small corner of the world. The story that unfolds is one of Mitchell diversifying his plantings; fighting what he sees as unnecessary local development; walking through and observing changes in the wild lands nearby; continuing to read the news from around the world; and meditating on other moments, real and imagined, when people sought refuge even as they did their part to improve a personally and collectively stressful situation.

Readers discover the impossibility of separating gardening from global warming, while also seeing the solace that exposure to plants can offer, in addition to their contribution to carbon consumption. With gravitas, kindness, and wit, Mitchell offers a model for maintaining a connection to nature even as it reels from manmade threats.

JOHN HANSON MITCHELL is the founder and was the longtime editor of Massachusetts Audubon Society’s award-winning journal Sanctuary. He has published numerous books, including, most recently, Legends of a Common Stream. His book Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile was the Editor’s Choice in the New York Times’ Book Review; six of his books based on the square mile of land featured in Ceremonial Time were collected and published as The Scratch Flat Chronicles. He won the John Burroughs Essay Award for his Sanctuary piece, ＂Of Time and the River.＂ He continues to live on that one square mile of land in eastern Massachusetts.