John Hanson Mitchell, author of The Garden at the End of Time [08/27/25]

Porter Square Books is excited to welcome John Hanson Mitchell to celebrate the release of his book The Garden at the End of Time.

This event will take place at our CAMBRIDGE store. We offer validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. See parking details below.

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ABOUT THE GARDEN AT THE END OF TIME

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, all of which have worsened since that year. 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Along with his nonfiction work, John Hanson Mitchell was the founder and editor of the award winning journal, Sanctuary, published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. In 2001 he won a Vogelstein grant for Following the Sun. He was awarded an honorary PhD from Fitchburg State University for his work on the book Ceremonial Time and was given three different grants for his work on Looking for Mr. Gilbert. He is also winner of the John Burroughs Essay Award for his Sanctuary piece, "Of Time and the River". In 2000, he was given the New England Booksellers' Award for the body of his work.

Ceremonial Time was Editor's Choice at the NYT'S Book Review; most of his other works were favorably reviewed in the Times, the Boston Globe, Washington Post, L.A. Times, London Times Literary Supplement, etc. Six books based on the square mile of land featured in Ceremonial Time have been republished by the University of New England Press, collected together as "The Scratch Flat Chronicles". Stray Leaves, a collection of his Sanctuary essays, was published in 2015.

Mitchell attended the Sorbonne and is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in comparative literature. A former journalist, he has had assignments in Kerala in southern India and also the South China Sea and has written extensively about Western Europe. He was editor of The Curious Naturalist, and a co-author, with Chris Leahy and Tom Conuel, of the coffee table edition of The Nature of Massachusetts (1998), illustrated by the internationally-recognized Swedish painter Lars Jonsson.

PARKING

Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition offers validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. Roseland Street is accessible by Beacon Street and Mass Ave. When you arrive at the lot, use the screen on the kiosk to get a ticket.

When you're ready to leave, ask for a validation barcode at the cash register. (No purchase necessary.) Parking is free on weekends and weekday evenings from 6PM-7AM. From 7AM-6PM on weekdays the first 45 minutes are free.

Upon exiting the lot, scan your ticket and choose "validation." Then scan the barcode your received from us. If you have an additional charge, you will be prompted to pay after scanning your barcode.

John Hanson Mitchell, author of The Garden at the End of Time

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John Hanson Mitchell, author of The Garden at the End of Time

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