Growing up, we were considered to be the country mice of the extended family as we lived on a one acre plot about 45 minutes from the “big city.” All of my cousins, aunts, and uncles lived on medium sized suburban city lots, and it was just understood that we lived in the wild, though my family religiously mowed the lawn at least once a week spring through fall.

Our huge expanse of a front yard was mostly lawn, as was our back yard, and even though we had fir, cedar, and fruit trees placed sporadically about, our street was about as suburban as you can get in the middle of the country.

It wasn’t until I moved to a small suburban apartment complex with an almost perfectly manicured lawn and grounds that I began to realize the similarities between the two places and started wondering what truly is wild.

In comes William Robinson — with Rick Darke — and The Wild Garden. William Robinson pioneered the naturalistic gardening style in Britain (home of the perfectly manicured lawn and sculpted boxwoods), and his style continues to influence gardeners across the globe today.

Timber author Rick Darke updated Robinson’s classic with gorgeous new photography, and some introductory chapters, and he has recently written an article for The American Gardener magazine that describes exactly “What is Wild?” (Link goes to a PDF.)

William Robinson and Rick Darke have shown me that you don’t have to live in the country to have a naturalistic, “wild” space.

I am currently researching magazines as I prepare for a trip to New York to pitch Timber Press story and segment ideas to editors and television producers. The three that I have been reading this week–Every Day With Rachael Ray, Real Simple, and Metropolitan Home–have very different editorial styles and don’t have a strong focus on gardening, though they all dabble a little bit.

You can probably imagine my surprise then when reading the July/August Metropolitan Home’s “Letter from the Editor” about the joys and trials of her gardening experiences over the past few years. Having just started my first garden this year, it is a relief to know that some of the problems I’m facing aren’t just because I’m inexperienced — insects are nondiscriminatory when it comes to gardens, beginner or experienced, and I’m just happy I don’t have horses anywhere nearby that can lean over the fence and snack on my heirloom green tomatoes!

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One of my intern duties at Timber Press is magazine perusal. The office subscribes to a number of titles that relate to gardening and book publishing and the Pacific Northwest, and it’s my job to page through them and see if any Timber books have been reviewed or are mentioned in articles. (I know, it’s pretty glamorous work.) Yesterday I was working through the pile and came to Martha Stewart Living. And I felt … excited.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong or weird in liking Martha’s mag. It’s just that I’m 26, male, and I really love eating $4 burritos. So I’m not exactly Martha’s target audience. But, I can’t stop myself from admitting that it is a really good magazine. Let’s use the newest issue as a sample. There’s a story near the front detailing simple-to-make lobster recipes (lobster pot pie!) Later, a section outlines how to host a lobster bake. Then the back page is devoted to something called vanilla-raspberry sundaes with spoon-shaped cookies–so you make cookies that look like spoons, eat a sundae with the utensil you just baked, and then eat the “dishes.” Those three pieces work together to create this imagined celebration of summertime eating.

Some people might actually make the ideas a reality, but I am almost positive I never will (it all must cost way more than $4 and not a single burrito is involved). Still, it was fun to read about. I was “engaged,” as people in the marketing industry like to say.