Anne Raver

Full-time fall 1997 and
spring 1998.

Photo by Doug Cogger.

Anne Raver writes about gardening, nature and the environment for the New York Times. During her six years on the paper, Ms. Raver has reported on farmland preservation, urban land use, the community garden movement, historic landscape preservation, African influences in southern gardens, the national seed-saving movement's relationship to biodiversity, and many other issues. Her weekly garden column covers the pragmatic concerns of the dirt gardener, from composting with redworms, to rose rustling. She is also the author of "Deep in the Green: An Exploration of Country Pleasures," published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995. The book has also been translated into Japanese.

Ms. Raver has lectured on a variety of subjects, including her family's struggle to preserve its four-generation farm in western Maryland, and her travel experiences, from the Amazon to the gardens of England. Ms. Raver holds a masters degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor of arts degree from Oberlin College. She is presently active in the community garden movement in New York, and lives in Red Hook, a waterfront section of Brooklyn.

As a Loeb Fellow, Ms. Raver studied biology, as well as geography and landscape history. She is interested in how geography influenced the designs and beliefs of ancient civilizations. In addition, she studied how the problems of today - shrinking space, overpopulation, pollution - shape the contemporary environment and landscape design. She also pursued the possibilities of using nature and gardening in children's education, from biology to writing and painting.