Customer Reviews

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

There's a tendency among activists these days to see their focus as the solution to all the world's problems. For one author, feminism envelopes all issues; for another communism (or capitalism) does. For others, it's Christianity.
As an avid, beginning gardener, I understand the appeal, but I feel like the connection between world peace and gardening wasn't adequately argued in the book. Having scrounged myself a piece of a neighbor's yard, I expected that this would be a good book to get me started on a practical bent. However, I found that the idealism often prevented extensive practical advice which is necessary for the beginner. Perhaps advanced gardeners can "make space for all plant species" and can't recommend one species above another, but there was limited - almost non-existent - acknowledgment that some species are easier to grow than others, and some are more useful in terms of food production, especially if space is extremely limited. For a first "food" garden, would I be better off growing potatoes? Tomatoes? Spinach?
I found the transition from garden-related activism to community activism quite rocky. I wish the sections on seed-saving and connecting with neighbors were expanded. On a personal level, I found many of the asides (which I will paraphrase as "well, *of course* all right-minded people agree that ____________") were off-putting, as hard-core radical leftists are not the only ones who are interested in producing clean, local food and making communities. I was also troubled by the exhortations to get rid of appliances, go vegetarian, and dumpster scavenge to save the environment, while at the same time suggesting extensive driving (to farms, to dumpsters, around town, between bakeries).
All that aside, Food Not Lawns is an interesting read. It's a bit like reading a brainstorming session, which politics and communication and personal stories and food info is interspersed. It is clear the author is passionate about her subject, and believes in the process. In a sense, it is a very second-wave book - before the post-post modern doubts and hyper self-awareness. It's refreshing, and combined with sources of practical horticultural information, would be a good read for any radical gardener.

Food Not Lawns is a terrific and timely new paperback from activist and urban gardener H.C. Flores.

Flores is a proponent of permaculture, a sustainable way of landscaping inspired by natural eco-systems. Her book presents a nine-step plan to transform the typical wasteland of turf into a productive, environmentally friendly "paradise garden" bursting with edible bounty. "The average American lawn," according to Flores, "could produce several hundred pounds of food a year."

Food Not Lawns began as an offshoot of the grassroots group Food Not Bombs, a non-profit with chapters all over the country that provides free vegetarian meals to the hungry using donated ingredients that would otherwise end up in a dumpster.

Flores' experience cooking and serving meals with Food Not Bombs gave her a new ambition; instead of simply providing food to others, she wanted to teach people how to provide for themselves. She describes Food Not Lawns as a "grassroots gardening project geared toward using waste resources to grow organic gardens and encouraging others to share their space, surplus, and ideas toward the betterment of the whole community."

The more Flores learned about food, agriculture, and land use, she says, the more she came to see the typical suburban lawn as a symbol of "gross waste and mindless affluence."

Flores reveals that there's nothing green about our love of lawns, which gobble up more resources and create more pollution than industrial farming. Her book explains how the weaknesses of our industrial food chain, and the unsustainable terrain of turf that surrounds suburbia have inspired a grassroots movement to grow not grass, but food.

Food Not Lawns is the perfect introduction to the permaculture revolution. Flores documents how we've become enslaved by a fossil fuel-based food chain and a consumer culture run amuck, but if the "peak oil" experts prove to be right, our industrialized food system and wasteful way of life will be unsustainable. In a post-petroleum era, people who know how to grow their own produce are going to be very popular. Buy this book, and become one of them!

I picked up this book to learn practical application of permacultural principles applied to urban yard scales--and there is a wealth of such information here. However, I do feel like Flores preaches just a little too much about the environmental destruction and political problems currently plaguing our country. In my view, anyone picking up a book called Food Not Lawns probably is already well-versed in such issues, and Flores is essentially preaching to the converted. That said, this book DOES have tons of practical information, and I would recommend it as an excellent counterbalance and companion book to Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden.

When I had originally bought this book I thought it was going to give me step by step instructions for turning my lawn into a food producing landscape. However when I read the book cover to cover in less than 3 weeks (which is rare with me, I usually never read them that fast) I realized what Heather was focusing on - Community and education. She has written a book to inspire us to grow on our front lawns and talk to our neighbors about it. Get the community involved no matter who they are. After I read it and then promptly lent it to a friend with similar interests I popped in the DVD "End of Suburbia" - I listened to James Kunstler talk about how were doomed and he even mentions that growing food on our lawns may start to become mainstream. This book will guide those of us who are willing to be pioneers in the upcoming energy transition and help us help eachother grow food consciously with the small or large spaces that we now mow. What a breath of fresh air and a really inspiring, well thought out guide. Its a must read. I purchased this book with Toby Hemenways Gaias Garden and they are a perfect match, Toby goes into a more in depth permaculture perspective.

A big Mahalo to Heather!

I was very excited about ordering this book. I envisioned it would gave step by step, practical advice on how to transform my suburban yard into a lush garden. I was very disappointed, however, to find it full of advice that was either too vauge, or too complicated for the average home owner.
Ms. Flores starts off the book preaching about environmental concern. She could have spared the reader, since anyone who would buy this book is already concerned about their eco-system. Several pages of the beginning of the book give spacey, loose instructions on observing your community and yard space, as if the average reader has unlimited time to stare at her yard, and go on excursions for resources.

Flores goes on with her irrational ideas, giving several suggestions which are ILLEGAL, like diving into dumpsters and stealing off of thrift store lots. She also devotes quite a few paragraphs to setting up a water conservation system, which starts with recycling bathwater, which BTW, she also mentions is illegal in many cities. There's no in-between or alternate suggestions given. Flores, instead goes rambling on about elaborate modifications that the average person would not do to begin a garden.

This book might be good for those who have extensive knowledge of gardening, lots and lots of free time, and advanced mechanical skills, who want an all-or-nothing approach, but it offers very little for a beginner.

I see that this books appears a hit with many reviewers, but I am unfortunately going to dissent. I was excited to read this book when it arrived and was subsequently dissappointed in the overall quality of the work as a whole. First and foremost, Flores leaves out a great deal of detail with regard to the actual work involved in any form of agriculture, be it animal husbandry, permaculture, or anything between. I say this not only as an avid reader, but also an environmental studies major reviewing the work for a class as well. Second, Flores' method of combining the topics of agriculture and social change is facetious at best, with no real segway from the former to the latter. In other words, this is literally two unconnected books sharing the same binding. Finally, and most disheartening of all, the work gives faulty advice at best, especially with regard to her advice on dealing with numerous aspects of gardening (traditional and permaculture), pending jail time, and conflict management strategies(with latter are potentially dangerous). I will also note that I resold this book immediately upon completion due to the above. Those interested would be better served to read The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing, or other such related books by other reputable authors such as Joseph Jenkins, Eliot Coleman, Louise Riotte, or John and Martha Storey. In short, do not purchase this book if you are serious about either agriculture or social change.

For activist readers who believe activism is a political pursuit, FOOD NOT LAWNS: HOW TO TURN YOUR YARD INTO A GARDEN AND YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD INTO A COMMUNITY offers a different viewpoint, maintaining that growing food where you live is a key method of becoming a food activist in the community. Chapters advocate planting home and community gardens with an eye to drawing important connections between the politics of a home or community garden and the wider politics of usage, consumption, and sustainability. Another rarity: chapters promote small, easy changes in lifestyles to achieve a transition between personal choice and political activism at the community level, providing keys to change any reader can use.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

FOOD NOT LAWNS - Heather Flores, Cheslea Green '06

This is the most inspiring book on naturalizing our home & neighborhood relationships I've ever read, after 30 years of study & practice. I've visited 100s of gardens in a dozen nations & grown them in Oregon, Puget sound, Hawaii & Australia during my Permaculture design course training with Robyn Francis in Nimbin NSW.
If you want to green up your yard & grow fresh organic food at home, this is it. Heather's writing is lucid, clear & personal `how to' do it at every stage beginning to ever growing greener. I've known her since late `90s when she & friends began to urbanize Permaculture, ie organic homesteading with many cooperative projects, gardening in a park, seed swaps, workshops, etc. So FNL was born of instingating local groups for green homes. Now there's few 1000 gardens growing food, herbs & flowers around town & 100s of fruit trees dropping food in season.
About the gardening techniques of FNL, simply beautiful illustrations of natural elements of gardening: composting, planting, mulching, water cycles, microcosmos of soil fertility in urban ecology. It's great for beginners to advanced. Her chapters on "Free your lawn, Gaining ground, The Water cycle, Living soil, plants & polyculture, Seed stewardship, Ecological design, Beyond the garden, Into the community, Reaching out, Working together & The next generation" are simple, innovative & immense potentials of growing more healthy.
It contains vast resources on many all levels organic & cooperative. She write more personal, friendly & sensitive than pioneering books by Bill Mollison & David Homlgren on Permaculture. I'm amazed at how she's gathered & explains 100s of ways to transform our homes & community into abundant green-belts around our yard. It guides us into sources of fertility, beauty, pleasure, green work & cooperating with Nature & our neighbors raising awareness about 100s of codependent cycles supporting our natural living anywhere on earth. rev by micheal sunanda

Having recently purchased and read 3 books on urban and community gardening, it is easy to state that this book is the poorest of the 3. To sum up the difference quickly: the primary tone and goal of the book is activism and not actual gardening.

However, it also is not a very good activism book as it shows the anger and frustration of the writer first and foremost. For a book on building communities, it quickly alienates and attacks people, corporations, government, etc.

There are many pieces of information that have value within the pages, but the content is commonly far too general. The tone and style lend toward a constant introduction with vague generalities then followed by a quick picture or chart of detailed information with little further in-depth reference to it.

There are few personal stories of success or of how the methods included were utilized by the author. It is a book that reads like someone talking at you vs. talking with you. Hardly conversational, it reads like a manifesto vs. today's society.

There is much to change about our methods of food production today, but this book starts primarily by trying to make its reader angry and turning them to the cause at hand. From my perspective, less than 20% of the book had value. It isn't useless, but the writing style, the content and the apparent goal of the book do not serve the subject well.

Having never been able to afford proper permaculture education and living far away from where such courses are offered anyway, I found this book to be a real blessing, full of practical information on polycultural organic gardening, composting, vermiculture, ecological design, appropriate technology, edible weeds, biodynamic farming, seed stewardship, community organizing, conflict resolution, activism, ecological pedagogy, and more. Certainly, if you are interested in planting a backyard or community garden, then this book is one that you will want to read immediately. With our present capitalist agricultural system destroying the biosphere and our health via global warming, deforestation, pesticide run-off, top soil erosion, biotechnology, and cancer, one really needs to read and encourage others to read this amazing book. More importantly, we need to reconnect with the land, get some soil beneath our fingernails, and begin planting the seeds of that better world we're always talking and dreaming about. Thank you H.C. Flores for this excellent book and for all the inspiring things you do to build a more rational, socially just, and ecological society!