Customer Reviews

Allergy-Free Gardening: The Revolutionary Guide to Healthy Landscaping

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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!

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.

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.

Packed with information that is scientific yet very easy to understand, I found Allergy-Free Gardening to be completely useful. It is a book that I refer to often and already I have been making very good use of it in my own gardens. This book is arranged in such a way that it easy and quick to find any and garden plants discussed and allergy ranked. I like the way every plant is ranked on a one to ten scale since this makes it perfectly clear as to the allergy potential of each. I also have found this to be an excellent general gardening book, full of useful tips on much more than just allergies. The author's explanation about plant sex and male and female plants makes a great deal of sense. It is something that I hope will be much better understood in the near future. I have been recommending Allergy-Free Gardening to everyone I know who gardens and certainly to everyone I know who has allergies. It is an impressive, well-researched, fun to read book and really, a must for anyone with a decent gardening library. Last week there was a large article about this book in the San Jose Mercury News and the garden writer there obviously agrees with me. If you have allergies, this is the one to own.

After seven years of suffering with allergies, I read Thomas Ogren's book and was astonished to find that the problems have been right in our own back yard! Our by now enormous Modesto Ash, for example, was certainly a source of our wheezing and sneezing. In our fair city (Las Vegas) which values tidy, no fuss fruitless lanscaping over the natural plantings Ogren suggests, it's no wonder our citizens are plagued by chronic allergies. After having the ash professionally removed, I provided our landscaper with a copy of Ogren's book and he's using it to design (and redesign) allergy free environments--essential comfort zones--for other clients. I also sent a copy to my city councilman. Throw out your antihistamines and spread the word: Ogren's Allergy Free gardening WILL change your life! And when are we going to see his show on Home&Garden TV?

In our quest for a tidier landscape, it would seem we have been creating an allergy laden nightmare. Many thanks to Tom Ogren, an agricultural scientist, for pointing out that in plants that have separate sexes, the female is always the one without the pollen. Unfortunately, she also has the flowers that can drop and litter the yard or sidewalk. This has led to the growing trend of planting male only trees in landscapes. But, if you have an allergy or asthma, these male only trees can be hazardous to your health because they produce the pollen. The good news is Mr. Ogren explains how to top graft your trees so you might be able to save them!

Mr. Ogren has created an extremely useful tool to rate the allergen causing potential for thousands of trees, shrubs, perennials and herbs. In encyclopedic fashion, he lays out these plants under their scientific name and adds helpful insights about many of them.

His allergen rating scale is so thoroughly researched that it has been adopted by the USDA to rank entire cities.

There is so much more to this book than a discussion of pollen though. The opening chapters of this book have many useful ideas on how to lead a healthier life and in the process reduce your allergic reactions. For instance, flowers rated on the low pollen side of 2 to 4 in this book, are usually safe to have around unless you directly inhale their fragrance.

Allergy-Free Gardening is bound to become a most valuable reference for all those who have allergies or who have loved ones that suffer from allergies.

I have read all the books on this subject and this one is the best by far. None of the others have an allergy scale, and the scale makes finding the best plants much easier.
This book is also interesting and is full of good tips about gardening in general. The author spent many years working on this book and it is indeed useful and easy to understand.
I've had this book about a year now and have made many changes in my own landscapes, front and back yards both. Some of the shrubs we had were rated the very worst and getting them replaced was a big plus for me and my family, all of whom have allergies.
The photos in the book are quite good, as are the many drawings. Everything in it is cross-referenced and this makes it quick to find what you're looking for.
I got Allergy Free Gardening on the advice of my allergist and I have been recommending it to almost everyone I know. I wish I had had this book before we first landscaped, but still, better late than never.
I've been giving copies of this book as presents to my relatives who have allergies and so far everyone has enjoyed it. I think it is probably one of the most useful books I own, and I own quite a few.
Shelby Stover

I've read this book over and over again, and every time I find something new. I have bad allergies and serious asthma and I need to have all the facts. Allergy-Free Gardening by Thomas Ogren is full of facts, full of important material you really can't find anywhere else. I read everything I can get my hands on about allergies and I like to garden too, so this book is perfect for me. I like the way everything is arranged in the book, very easy to use. The plants are all allergy ranked on a one to ten scale (where one is best and ten is worst) and this makes plant selection clear and simple. Ogren's writing is excellent, always interesting and cleanly expressed. Many years of research went into the writing of this fine reference book, and it shows. The book covers a very wide range of landscape and garden plants, and includes plants from the tropics to Alaska. All the plants are climate zone ranked, cultural garden tips are given freely, and there is much advice on how to find actual allergy-free plants. These allergy-free plants, it turns out, are usually female plants, since they don't produce pollen. There are pollen-free trees, bushes, vines, flowers, and even lawns. The exact names of the best plants are all in this neat book and when I go to the nursery I always take my copy with me. One of the best books I own!!

I have owned this book for several years now and couldn't do without it. I do a good deal of gardening and before I buy any new plants at the nursery, I consult Allergy Free Grdening. My allergist suggested I buy this book, and I am very glad that I did. AFG helps me pick out trees, shrubs, vines, & flowers that will not cause allergies. It is very easy to use, interesting, useful, and surprisingly, kind of fun to read. There is also a good deal of solid advice on how to grow different kinds of plants.
Several of my friends also own this book and we all find it terribly useful. If you have allergies or asthma, or if you have a husband, daughter, son, or good friend who does, this is the book to own. It would also make a wonderful present for your favorite doctor, especially so if he/she is an allergist. I highly recommend Allergy-Free Gardening.

People who appreciated the style of, and all the unique, valuable information and careful research that went into Allergy-Free Gardening will certainly be interested in reading Ogren's next book, due out this March (2003), called "Safe Sex in the Garden," in which the author discusses how landscaping affects health. It has the largest section yet written on plants that cause skin rashes, a section on how to tell "boy plants" from "girl plants", a huge chapter on poisonous plants and poisonous pollen, an extensive chapter on allergies that animals get, and also one on reducing stress. And just in time for gardening season!