Book Review: Darwin's Garden

One of Darwin's many experiments was letting
a square of grass grow and counting the species.
Here: daisy, buttercup, and selfheal in the grass.

Written by Michael Boulter, this book is a carefully balanced study into the life and times of Charles Darwin as well as the science that developed after him.

The book places itself at Down House, the house that Darwin and his family moved into in the September of 1842. The first chapter deals swiftly with his life prior to moving to Downe.

We follow Darwin as he creates in the garden around the house and not only develops a wonderful place for his family to live and grow, but also an ideal setting for his many experiments. To help us orientate ourselves as we visit Down House, the author presents us with two maps. The first being the house with the land surrounding it, the second being a details floor plan of the ground floor.

From pigeons to primroses and from parsley to plant breeding, we can get a real sense of the calm and tranquillity that Darwin must have felt at home away from the stress of London - but also the excitement that came with discovery.

I hadn't realised that Darwin had written a sketch of his ideas about natural selection, never mind a whole book, called 'The Big Species Book' eventually published in 1975, about the topic years before the publication of Origins. After Wallace had sent that fated and famous letter to Darwin explaining his ideas of natural selection, Darwin was eager to get the book written - but it was taking longer than he liked. Boulter has a knack of getting to the heart of things and revealing Darwin at his most fragile, as in the letter Darwin wrote to Hooker stating: "so slow do I work, though never idle".

Of the many things that I didn't know, but now do, the X club was one of the most interesting. A club that had 9 members, of which Darwin may have been the secret tenth member. It seems that way as three of the members, along with Darwin, wrote books putting humans in their evolutionary place in the latter years of Darwin's life. It was also the members of the X club that ensured that Darwin was buried in what they considered his rightful place: Westminster Abbey - the burial place along with other British greats like Newton, Kipling and Livingstone.

At around the half way point of the book, we have a selection of plates in grayscale. Some of the house, others of people central to Darwins story and the science he inspired - it's always nice to put a face to a name.

The second part of the book focuses on the science that happened after Darwin. But Boulter always weaves the story back to the house and back to topics and thoughts that Darwin had. Such as Darwin's gemmules, his idea of the gene, which during his lifetime, but unknown to him had been investigated by Mendel - but which Darwin failed to find real evidence of.

The author also puts names to some of the science that we take for granted today. Scientists that first wrote of a primordial soup or of iceball earth.

We see that Darwin never stretched any idea too far and would only do as far as current facts and knowledge went. With that said, it's always nice to see when a great person is humble enough to accept ideas even when it was thought of by another. When Marquis de Saporta wrote about flowering plants not developing until sucking insects evolved, Darwin wrote to him in wonderful honesty saying that it had never occurred to him. It's a feeling of 'how obvious' that we've all felt at one time or another:

"This is always the case when one first hears a new and simple explanation of some mysterious phenomenon"

This is a well written book; the first I've read about Darwin. It's fascinating how the author has been able to create a book that goes around the world and deep into the sciences, yet brings it all back cohesively to Darwin's garden. Well worth your time!