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Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture [Paperback]

Toby Hemenway
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (119 customer reviews)

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Book Description

April 2009
The first edition of Gaia's Garden, sparked the imagination of America's home gardeners, introducing permaculture's central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.

Many people mistakenly 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. As Hemenway demonstrates, it's fun and easy 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 habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals
  • Growing an edible "forest" that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods
This revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. 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.

Frequently Bought Together

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture + Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening--With information on mushroom cultivation, sowing a ... ways to keep livestock, and more...
Price for both: $43.70

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Takes the native plants and organic gardening movement to the next level."--Joel M. Lerner, The Washington Post (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)

"There is so much wisdom in Gaia's Garden that I would need a dozen columns to do it justice. . . a bold, wonderful, nature-embracing and completely sensible vision of the future."--Justin Siskin, Los Angeles Daily News (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)

"Practical science for making your yard produce food and beauty."--Rose O'Donnell, The Seattle Times (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)

"A gardener's blueprint for ecological abundance from the ground up."--Steve Spreckel, Acres USA (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)

"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 and http://www.HarvestingRainwater.com



"Outlines a revolutionary course for the future of gardening and agriculture."--Dr. John Todd, founder of The New Alchemy Institute (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)

"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



"This is a book you will use and re-use, and enjoy having around for a long time."--Peter Bane, The Permaculture Activist (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)

"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

"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

"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

About the Author

Toby Hemenway is the author of the first major North American book on permaculture, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, and an adjunct assistant professor at Portland State University. He wrote the foreword for Heather C. Flores' Food Not Lawns.

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 including 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. His current project is developing urban sustainability resources in Portland, Oregon, where he now lives. He teaches permaculture and consults and lectures on ecological design throughout the country. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home, and Kitchen Gardener. He is available for workshops, lectures, and consulting in ecological design.

Visit his web site at http:// www.patternliteracy.com

Product Details

  • Paperback: 328 pages
  • Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing; 2nd edition (April 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1603580298
  • ISBN-13: 978-1603580298
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 0.8 x 9.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (119 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which for the past six years has been the world's best-selling book on permaculture, a design approach based on ecology for creating sustainable landscapes, homes, communities, and workplaces. He has been an adjunct professor in the School of Graduate Education at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and a biologist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild. He teaches, consults, and lectures on permaculture and ecological design throughout the US and other countries. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review, and American Gardener. He lives in Sebastopol, California, where he is developing sites and resources for urban and small-town sustainability.

Customer Reviews

It is very well written in a style that is easy to read and understand. Christian Remington  |  40 reviewers made a similar statement
Wonderful book which opened my eyes to different possibilities! Reni  |  17 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
163 of 164 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of info with tables, glorious tables! September 7, 2009
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
What I really love about this book is how much Mr. Hemenway goes into the *reasons* that these methods work. Call me obsessive, but I like authors to provide a good reason their techniques work and not just say "OMG, look at this harvest, just do exactly what I do!" Mr. Hememway gives us beautiful, well-though out tables of different nutrients certain plants accumulate, what kinds of bugs they attract, plants that can tolerate drought or provide mulch on the spot, plants that have "spiky" roots that break up tough top-soil and plants that can provide structure or shade to other plants. It's about using the attributes of different vegetation to do the work for you in a way that doesn't adversely impact the land. Armed with this information, you can create your own "guilds" and areas of companion plants that work best for your location. Outside of a textbook, this is the most complete information on gardening I have ever come across. The author even presents the downsides of the methods in, what I feel, is a very even-handed manner. No one style fits every need and Mr. Hemenway addresses that. This is my favorite gardening book, period.
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114 of 115 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on permaculture today January 25, 2010
Format:Paperback
I have read nearly every permaculture book written, and I have visited with thousands of people about permaculture. I have to say that this is the book I recommend the most often, but it is also the book I quote the most.

If a person is going to get just one permaculture book, this is the book to get.
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86 of 88 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a wealth of information. It teaches how to design and grow a home garden using permaculture and ecological gardening techniques. These techniques are designed to minimize input regarding fertilizers, pesticides and time, by imitating nature. Nature shows us that many different species of plants perform better together than one species. In permaculture each plant has more than one purpose. Not only will the plant provide food, but it may also shade another plant or attract beneficial insects. In Gaia's Garden you'll learn how to implement these ideas to create your own sustainable food forest.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Packed with info
I picked up this book because it was referred to often in another book I'm using as a guide to my garden this spring. This book is full of information, almost too full. Read more
Published 1 hour ago by Todd
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome world changing book!
I love this book! It's very inspiring and I'm looking at everything in a new way and planning on transforming my yard into a beautiful, productive food forest!
Published 12 days ago by Resi Dent
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
I have owned this book in the past but lent it out. Never got it back. I'm not letting this copy out of my hands.
Published 17 days ago by Sandra Hultgren
5.0 out of 5 stars great book on permaculture
This book is written in a way that everybody who reads this, cannot wait to apply the principles of permaculture in his own garden.
Published 21 days ago by Guuske de Vree
5.0 out of 5 stars A darn good book.
Could write heaps about it, but if you like us are starting on a block of tired ground... Then read this first.. Read more
Published 24 days ago by Geoff7
5.0 out of 5 stars What a fabulous introduction!
Love this book! It's a great guide to permaculture design for the home gardener. I'm so inspired I've started a map and am eager to begin tearing up my lawn.
Published 1 month ago by debra smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Gaia's Garden wonderful information
What wonderful information- I have also purchased this book for my daughter and can now add to my gardens even more successfully- utilizing what I have and not spending a fortune... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Reba Potee
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, very informative.
Very informative for the novice permaculturist. I learned a lot of interesting concepts form this book and would recommend it to you if you are interested in learning about the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sammy Shellfish
5.0 out of 5 stars The BEST Permaculture book - BY FAR!!!
This book was so much easier to read than many of the other Permaculture books out there. Everything was explained in layperson's terms and arranged in a way that was functional... Read more
Published 2 months ago by M. Millar
5.0 out of 5 stars Great help.
I have read lots of books on the subject - this tied it together in a way that wasn't daunting. I am a bit more than a novice gardner, and not a master. Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. Rutherford
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