Author Patricia Klindienst contends that the garden as we know it is presented as a “province of the privileged and white.” Martha Stewart come to mind.

She feels garden writing, by extension, tends to bypass the experiences of the ethnic peoples and their contributions to our landscapes. “As a result, the idea of the garden has been stripped of its cultural weight.”

Klindienst, a writing teacher and master gardener from Connecticut, explores this thesis in her book, “The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans.”

The author profiles 15 gardens in the book, all created by people from non-Northern European stock: Native Americans, Hispanics, Gullah gardeners in South Carolina, descended from West African slaves, and closer to home, the first generation Japanese farmers of Bainbridge Island.

For these people, a garden is not just a source of food, it’s a place where their own roots are sunk deep into the earth. It is a part of who they are in a way that can’t be replicated by a shopping trip to a plant nursery.

In a chapter called “Place” Klindienst chronicles the story of Day Road Farm on which Bainbridge Winery’s vineyards were planted by the Polish-American Bentryn family, on land shared with long-time island berry farmer Akio Suyematsu.

Both families are well known on Bainbridge, but their story has never been told quite like this. Klindienst looks at how they have experienced America through the lens of ethnicity and how, from a sense of displacement a profound commitment to place has emerged.

Although the book has a political bent, the portraits of American gardeners and their gardens also contain wide-ranging details of agricultural history, such as how to make blue corn piki bread or how the injustice of post-emancipation land sales affected one farmer.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer said of the book, “Klindienst provides an unpretentious and touching tour of the increasingly rare corners of the country where land is worked by friendly locals who know the differences between five types of basil and can jaw for hours about plants, soils and the weather. This book’s broad scope touches on the best of nature writing, singing the rhythm of growth in both plants and people.”

Klindienst will present a slide show and talk on “The Earth Knows My Name” 7:30 p.m. June 22 at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island.