Des Kennedy is an award winning writer, gardener and activist. Born in Liverpool, England, in 1945, he emigrated with his family to Toronto in 1955 and as a young man trained for eight years in a monastic seminary. After stints as a high school teacher and social worker, he has lived for the past 38 years on one of British Columbia’s fabled Gulf Islands. The hand-hewn home and gardens he and his partner Sandy created on their island acreage have been featured in numerous television programs, books, magazines and calendars. Over the years he has contributed countless articles on environmental issues, gardening and rural living to a wide variety of publications in Canada and the United States, including seven years as gardening columnist for The Globe and Mail. He has been listed as one of the most influential personalities in the Canadian gardening scene.
Kennedy is the author of four books of essays and three novels, and has been three times nominated for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor. The Globe and Mail described Living Things We Love to Hate, as “a howlingly funny, unbearably enlightening, relentlessly fascinating and endearingly charming collection of essays.” Reviewing Crazy About Gardening, the prestigious American magazine Horticulture noted: “It is a rare delight to discover a compelling new voice in garden writing, and Kennedy’s is a fascinating one.” The Globe and Mail stated: “With An Ecology of Enchantment Des Kennedy proves himself one of the best gardening writers in Canada.” The Times-Picayune of New Orleans praised the book’s “languid, poetic prose” adding, “His meditative style is a natural response to the meditative nature of gardening, so that regardless of what Kennedy writes about, the mere way in which he writes it evokes the tranquility of his craft.” The Passionate Gardener contains many of the horticultural satires for which Kennedy is well known on the garden club and garden show circuit. Chicago Botanic Garden described it as “a wonderful tale filled with stunning ideas.”
Author Jane Rule characterized his novel The Garden Club as “rich with local legends, yarns, gossip, political controversy all contained in the seasonal rhythms of rural life. A beautifully written, funny, hopeful book.” The Vancouver Sun called his novel Flame of Separation “a gem of a book” that exhibits “power and grace” and “an open-hearted novel the likes of which are too rarely seen.” His latest novel, Climbing Patrick’s Mountain, is set largely in the gardens of Ireland. Poet Gary Geddes called it a “delightfully edgy novel” that is “a marvel of light and dark.”
Kennedy has appeared on a variety of regional and national television and radio programs and for six years he was a weekly columnist on the national CBC television program Midday. He’s a celebrated speaker, having performed at numerous conferences, schools, festivals, botanical gardens, art galleries, garden shows and wilderness gatherings in Canada and the U.S. He has hosted tours of the gardens of Ireland, New Zealand, China and England As well, he’s been active for many years in environmental and social justice issues, including co organizing the civil disobedience campaign in Strathcona Provincial Park in 1988 and getting arrested at Clayoquot Sound in 1993. He worked for several years in the 70s and early 80s as a land claim consultant for two Indian bands in north-central B.C. and was a founding director of a community land trust on Denman Island.
