15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Allergy-Free Gardening, June 22, 2000
Finally, an alternative to massive drug-therapy for folks with pollen allergies! Allergy-Free Gardening is a radical book, full of the valuable information allergy-sufferers need to excercise control over their immediate environment, the most likely cause of pollen allergies (unless you live in Tucson, where the city planted fruitless mulberry trees whose highly-allergenic pollen makes it impossible for some to go outside).
Ogren includes a comprehensive listing of plants and gives each an OPALS (Ogren Plant Allergy Scale) rating, so the informed gardener can now plant wisely and avoid plants that make people sick. OPALS is being used by the US Dept. of Agriculture in cities throughout the country-we can hope that with this new information, Recreation and Parks departments can begin making informed choices about what to plant in public areas so the likes of the Tucson fiasco is never repeated.
It's an indespensible guide for any allergy-sufferer who loves to garden, any gardener whose children or family suffer from pollen allergies, and should be required reading for all landscape architects. A real find!
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow! This is an incredible book!!, April 12, 2003
I just finished reading and reviewing Safe Sex in the Garden, the newest book by Thomas Leo
Ogren. I had already bought and read (several times) Allergy-Free Gardening. I am becomming a real fan of this author, who I would say knows more about health and horticulture than any other writer I've ever read.
Seriously, Ogren is that rare find, an original thinker who can write well. In both of his books the
text moves right along. It is almost like reading a good novel, except that as you read it,
you are learning so many remarkable, often quite incredible new things.
I have a friend who heard this author speak, at the Huntington Museum and arboretum, and
she told me that he is a fantastic speaker too. But that doesn't surprise me at all.
In Allergy-Free Gardening you will see what has happened in modern landscapng, where
tidy plants (male) are so much favored over pollen-free plants (female). There is a huge
section in the book where many thousands of garden and landscape plants are discussed, and
each one is given an easy to understand allergy (1-10) ranking. Everyone I know who owns this book has put it to use, making their own yards allergy-free. I count this book as probably the most useful
gardening book I own, and find that I refer to it over and over, and not just on health matters
either. The culture of plants, how to grow them best, all this is well covered.
I just can't recommend this book too highly. I wish that every single gardener, landscaper, allergist, doctor,
and horticulture teacher owned a copy. The city arborists need to read this book too, since
so often they are the ones who are planting all those allegenic, male, pollen producing street trees.
This is a good one (as is the super intersting Safe Sex in the Garden) and if you have a
garden and care about your own health, you'll simply love reading it.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Important Garden Book of the Year., August 6, 2000
Allergy-Free Gardening is an unusual new book, one that breaks new ground in an important way. I am an experienced gardener and I especially like the way this book is arranged. Everything is easy to find, perfectly understandable, and makes good sense. I find that the plant-allergy scale in particular makes this book highly useful. The author of this book, Ogren, has done a huge amount of work, and it shows. Surprising to me too, was the author's use of numerous interesting antidotes about different plants. This is a very well crafted book and everyone I've show it to has also been impressed. I would recommend this book to anyone with any interest in plants, gardening, and, or, allergy. The advice here will be invaluable in reducing allergies in cities big and small, and most of all, in the actual yards of the people who are smart enough to buy this book.
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