Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition

by Toby Hemenway

Overview

"A book that will be absolutely necessary in the world ahead."—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and Hope, Human and Wild

The revised and updated edition of the classic guide to ecological gardening for home gardeners to achieve more beautiful, abundant and forgiving gardens of any size

Featuring new guidance on urban permaculture for people with limited growing space

Many people think that ecological gardening—which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants—can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. But it’s fun and easy even for beginners to create a backyard ecosystem by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:

• Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure
• Catching and conserving water in the landscape
• Providing a rewilded and biodiverse habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals
• Growing an edible “forest” that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods

Best of all, once it’s established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that’s needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.

Gaia’s Garden has sparked the imagination of home gardeners the world over by introducing a simple message: working with nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. You can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful no matter what size garden or yard you have.

"An amazing achievement showing how we can and must live in harmony with nature!"—Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603580298
Publisher:	Rizzoli
Publication date:	04/30/2009
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Toby Hemenway was the author of the first major North American book on permaculture, Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, as well as The Permaculture City. After obtaining a degree in biology from Tufts University, Toby worked for many years as a researcher in genetics and immunology, first in academic laboratories at Harvard and the University of Washington in Seattle, and then at Immunex, a major medical biotech company. At about the time he was growing dissatisfied with the direction biotechnology was taking, he discovered permaculture, a design approach based on ecological principles that creates sustainable landscapes, homes, and workplaces. A career change followed, and Toby and his wife spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon. He was associate editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. He taught permaculture and consulted and lectured on ecological design throughout the country, and his writing appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home, and Kitchen Gardener. Toby passed away in 2016. Visit his web site at www.patternliteracy.com

Table of Contents

1. Introducing the ecological garden
2. A gardener's ecology
3. Designing the ecological garden
4. Bringing the soil to life
5. Catching, conserving, and using water
6. Plants for many uses
7. Bringing in the bees, birds, and other helpful animals
8. Creating communities for the garden
9. Designing garden guilds
10. Growing a food forest
11. Permaculture gardening in the city
12. Pop goes the garden

Editorial Reviews

"Become a sustainable producer of resources instead of a wasteful consumer. This wonderful book shows you how by helping you create and enhance beautiful backyard ecosystems within the garden. Put this book into action, and you'll begin to live an example that positively shifts your own community and beyond. Best of all, doing so with this book is simple, juicy, and fun."
—Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

"Toby's fun, well-grounded, and engaging book is fast becoming a classic, and deservedly so. Practical yet visionary, broad-ranging yet focused on the basics one needs to know, this is a great place to start on the permaculture path. The new edition builds solidly on the success of the first. Congratulations!"
—Dave Jacke, co-author of the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens

"The world didn't come with an operating manual, so it's a good thing that some wise people have from time to time written them. Gaia's Garden is one of the more important, a book that will be absolutely necessary in the world ahead."
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and Hope, Human and Wild

"Permaculture gardens are no longer a thing of the future. They are here to stay and flourish. Gaia's Garden is enlightening and required reading for all people who desire to make their home's landscape healthy, sustainable, and healing."
—Robert Kourik, author of Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape—Naturally

"Gaia's Garden is simply the best permaculture book ever written, and is in the running for best gardening book ever written. No one should be without it."
—Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front

"Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden will be recorded in history as a milestone for gardeners and landscapers—a fusion of the practical and the visionary—using the natural intelligence of Earth's symbiotic communities to strengthen and sustain ecosystems in which humans are a partner, not a competitor. An amazing achievement showing how we can and must live in harmony with nature!"
—Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

From the Publisher

"Gaia" (not in the glossary) refers to the view that the Earth is a living, interconnected organism. The associate editor of , who gardens in Southern Oregon, treats gardens as backyard ecosystems. The book includes organic garden design illustrations, and such useful information as the differences between immature and mature ecosystems, a garden designer's checklist, plants for attracting wildlife, and resources. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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