Edible Landscaping [Paperback]

Rosalind Creasy (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2010

Since Rosalind Creasy popularized the concept of landscaping with edibles a quarter-century ago, interest in eating healthy, fresh, locally grown foods has swept across the nation. More and more Americans are looking to grow clean, delicious produce at home, saving money and natural resources at the same time. And food plants have been freed from the backyard, gracing the finest landscapes—even the White House grounds!

Creasy’s expertise on edibles and how to incorporate them in beautifully designed outdoor environments was first showcased in the original edition of Edible Landscaping (Sierra Club Books, 1982), hailed by gardeners everywhere as a groundbreaking classic. Now this highly anticipated new edition presents the latest design and how-to information in a glorious full-color format, featuring more than 300 inspiring photographs.

Drawing on the author’s decades of research and experience, the book presents everything you need to know to create an inviting home landscape that will yield mouthwatering vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries. The comprehensive Encyclopedia of Edibles—a book in itself—provides horticultural information, culinary uses, sources, and recommended varieties; and appendices cover the basics of planting and maintenance, and of controlling pests and diseases using organic and environmentally friendly practices.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books; Second Edition edition (November 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578051541
• ISBN-13: 978-1578051540
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.9 x 11.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Landscape
  • #6 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Fruit
  • #11 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Garden Design

More About the Author

Rosalind Creasy is an award-winning garden and food writer, photographer, and landscape designer with a passion for beautiful vegetables and fruits combined with the strong conviction that gardening should be an ecologically positive endeavor. Her first book, the bestselling "The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping," written in 1982, stood as the seminal book on the subject for more than 25 years. It was one of the first American landscaping books to advocate organic methods, encourage recycling, and provide alternatives to resource-wasting gardening techniques. It served to move edibles out of their former sheltered backyard existence into the prominence of the front yard. Since the book's publication, the term "edible landscaping" has become part of horticultural, architectural, and common jargon.

An accomplished photographer, Ros was among the first to photograph the then-unknown heirloom tomatoes and melons, blue potatoes and corn, mesclun salad greens, and edible flowers. She popularized these and other outstanding, but little-known vegetables, in her 1988 book "Cooking From the Garden." Once again her writing broke new ground, introducing the American public to a vast new palette (and palate) of vegetables like candy cane striped 'Chioggia' beets; purple, red, white, and yellow carrots; 'Rosa Bianca' eggplants, baby bok choi, 'Rainbow' chard, chipotle peppers, purple artichokes, and other culinary delights that started out in high-end restaurants and now are seen in farmers markets and home gardens across the country.

Frustrated by America's penchant for lawns, for the last twenty-five years Ros has used her front garden to showcase an ever-changing display of edible ornamentals from A to Z, including 'Pink Pearl' apples, thornless blackberries, purple cauliflower, Kaffir lime, variegated peppermint, and golden zucchini and in themes as diverse as a Magic Circle Herb Garden to The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and a vegetable maze. Her engaging gardens welcome friends and neighbors; children regularly stop by to feed the chickens.

Rosalind is a much sought-after speaker and lecturer, addressing groups as diverse as Master Gardeners, Idaho Landscape Designers, horticultural societies from coast to coast, the Garden Writers Association, college landscaping programs, Celebrity Cruises, Seed Savers Exchange Annual Convention, Monticello, and Colonial Williamsburg. Her magnificent photography--not only of her own unique and enviable gardens, edible harvests, and cuisine, but also of gardens and gardeners she has visited--enriches her talks, enticing and inspiring audiences across the country.

Since 1982, Rosalind has written 18 books on gardening and cooking, including "Cooking from the Garden" and "Rosalind Creasy's Recipes From the Garden," and the children's book"Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes, How to Grow a Rainbow Garden." Her works have garnered some prestigious awards: Edible Landscaping won the Garden Writers Association (GWA) Quill & Trowel Award, as did Earthly Delights. Cooking from the Garden won the GWA Award of Excellence, In 1999 Ros was made a "Fellow" in the Garden Writers Association, an honor bestowed on only 64 people in the organization's 60 years, and in 2009 was inducted into the Garden Writers prestigious Hall of Fame.

Her varied and unique skills are in high demand. For more than a decade, she has been the exclusive photographer for a number of calendars, including the best-selling Seed Savers Calendar. In the past few years, Ros' photography and writing have been featured numerous magazines including Mother Earth News, Gardening How-To, Country Decorating, Sunset magazine, The LA Times, and Southwest Airline's Spirit Magazine. She has been a guest on NPR's "Science Friday with Ira Flatow" and APM's "The Splendid Table" with Lynn Rosetto Casper.

An acclaimed landscape designer, her gardens range beyond California, with design installations at The New York Botanical Garden and Powell Gardens in Kansas City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

100 of 102 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful gardens that look good, do good and taste good!!! October 12, 2010

By Working Mom

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Rosalind Creasy is an amazing landscape designer who really shows how to create amazing landscapes with edible plants that look ornamental, provide a wonderful ecosystem and provide plentiful food. She is a very talented photographer and most of the photos in her book are the ones she took and often in her own edible front yard in Los Altos california where she has been growing edibles for over 25 yrs. This is the bible if you want to really enjoy the fruits of your effort in the garden. It is not just a cottagey informal garden you can create but edible plants will work even in formal landscapes. Be inspired to break free from the confines of tucked away out of sight backyard veggie garden!! This is the garden book to get for your foodie friends. The book covers it all- trees, vines, companion planting, herbs, flowers, shrubs. Best of all, it gives very specific advice on the landscape aspect of it --> How to keep that hedge of variegated basil looking nice, when to harvest your produce and how to (Lettuce and chard is one leaf at a time from each plant) to keep your garden looking good. What plants do better in containers. How to use, color and form and line to make your garden visually stunning.

264 of 301 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars See it in person before buying February 20, 2011

By veratrine

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I love Amazon. I say this without reservation. I buy all kinds of things here, including many books, but occasionally I run into a situation when I wish I'd seen the book in person at a bookstore before pulling out my credit card...because I might not have decided to shell out 25 bucks in that case. An example of a book I wish I'd seen in person is Rosalind Creasy's Edible Landscaping. It has some beautiful pictures both from Rosalind's garden and from the gardens of others, but not as many as I had hoped for. Overall, however, they are the highlight of the book.

Unfortunately, since there are proportionately fewer pictures than I hoped for, there is also proportionately more text, and the text is not as helpful as it could be. (I find that the text is frequently the weak point of gardening books in general, and perhaps of garden design books in particular.) In the case of Edible Landscaping we have the following observations as samples (and I did not have to read closely to pick these out):
"Climate has a huge effect on your landscape."
"Paved paths are a necessity if you want to keep your feet clean and dry as you move from one part of the yard to another."
"A retaining wall holds back the soil on a hillside or slope."
"Certain plants or interesting structures and decorative gates or pottery are intended to stand out in the landscape..."
"Form (shape) is the most obvious characteristic of plants."
"Texture describes the coarseness or fineness of a plant..."

The text is very environmentally conscious, which I certainly don't object to. But green advice is sometimes less scientific than other advice, as if the environmentalists' rejection of the products of the highly-scientific chemical industry prevents them from actually backing up their concerns with data. I find some of this tendency in Edible Landscaping. For instance:
"Although (rubber) is a recycled material, I don't think it should be used near edible plants because of possible toxins." Well...are there toxins, or aren't there? And will they leach into soil and be absorbed by plants or not?
"If your soil has been repeatedly treated with artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, no doubt it is deficient in microbial life." One of the suggested solution is adding mycorrhizae, but this is of debatable value. For instance, one extension article states: "At present, there is very limited, unbiased scientific evidence demonstrating that mycorrhizal inoculations of urban soils with commercial preparations make plant establishment more successful or that the inoculated plants grow better and remain healthier over time".

Edible Landscaping is just over 400 pages long; pages 184 and following are devoted to an `Encyclopedia', Appendices A and B (two lists of edible plants), Appendix C on planting and maintenance, and Appendix D on pests and disease, plus resources and an index. There's not much to say about the appendices, but truthfully, I'm not sure for whom most of the information in the Encyclopedia was written. Consider:
Broccoli: How to use: "Both broccoli and cauliflower are terrific raw in crudités platters..."
Lettuce: How to use: "Lettuce is the keystone of salads of all sorts."
Tomato: How to use: "Tomatoes need no introduction." Okay, thanks for giving us at least that much credit. But the entry goes on to mention that tomatoes can be eaten fresh, frozen, canned, dried, or pickled and they can then be used in salsa, soup, or pizza. If your conversations in restaurants sound like this, you may need this part of the book:
"Bubba, there's some red things on this plate...what do you think they are?"
"I dunno...there's some green things on mine, and I can't tell what they are, but I sure can tell you they're tasty."
I think the rest of us can manage without this advice.

Overall, this will not be a book I return to frequently or perhaps at all. I have stronger books both on gardening and on design. None of is perfect, but they offer more that is of use to me than "Edible Landscaping." So...why did I buy this book in the first place? Because of rave reviews from Garden Rant and the LA Times. Eh. I guess I'll be a little more careful next time.

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars worth reading November 4, 2010

By J. Henry

Format:Paperback

I am a professional permaculture landscape designer and this book has been invaluable to me as a reference for edible landscaping. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to add edibles to their yard. It is an easy and beautiful way to get more from your yard!