Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I knew literally nothing about Permaculture gardening when I bought this book - my mother mentioned it to me and said to check it out, so I came to Amazon where the description intrigued me......fast forward 3 weeks later and my front water guzzling lawn has now been sheet mulched in preparation for a wonderful, sustainable, garden, and I have 5 baby chickens being delivered next week!

I'm not kidding when I say that this book was transformational in my views on gardening - I live in the city with very limited space, and our lawn was the best in the neighborhood. I have a raised bed for a garden in the back, and did produce some good veggies, but not near enough to eliminate buying any items at the grocery store. My first 10 minutes with this book I learned what I was doing wrong in my raised bed - and as I dug deeper it was one "Aha!" moment followed by another. I am a scientist, and I can't believe none of this had ever occurred to me!

The book is very in depth and gives wonderful examples with specific plants (not just general concepts) - the only thing I would have liked to see more of was pictures of actual permaculture gardens. I'm a very visual person and like to have something to imitate when designing my own project, so I'm still searching for design examples to incorporate (once again with specific plants).

Just know that if you get this book you're going to be inspired to make some drastic changes in your landscape - as evidenced by my "Bomb Proof Sheet Mulched" lawn - the recipe in the book for this was extremely helpful! I will admit that my first initial thought upon opening the book was - oh no, this is too in depth and not being a professional gardener, I'm never going to understand - trust me when I say, pick a chapter that sounds interesting to you and start there - that is what I did, and it migrated to many of the other chapters and just kept going!

Wonderful book which opened my eyes to different possibilities! Even saw some examples of Huegelkultur at an outdoor farm house museum in Graz, Austria this summer, something which was described in the "Gaia's Garden" book. This mound of brush, compost, and dirt was successfully growing a variety of veggies. "Gaia's Garden" encourages innovative thinking as I begin to explore what varieties of fruiting plants are available from around the world and which may work on my particular suburban lot. Recommending this book to many of my gardening family & friends who are working on developing a healthy food production ecology in their own back yards.

I own the first edition of this book and was chary of paying for the second edition, but it was totally worth it. The color photos alone are worth the cost of admission, as models and as sheer drool-worthy inspiration, but I also loved the added information on incorporating home-scale permaculture into a larger community/urban fabric. It also seems more cleanly organized and smoothly written. Highly recommended.

I have been dying to read this book for a few years now. I wish I had bought the book instead of the Kindle version. The Kindle version has a total of two pictures and no charts so you are left wanting and very disappointed. I will not buy any "how to" books for Kindle again as too much is left out. I feel like I was ripped off and if I were the author, I would not have agreed to having the book put on Kindle if they could not include the pics and charts that you get in the paper version.

A real shame because it is a good book. Just don't buy the Kindle version.

In my opinion, this is the best introduction to permaculture. It is very well written in a style that is easy to read and understand. There are, also, many color photographs and illustrations throughout the work. The author makes a point to direct the reader to the bibliography for further study of any subject covered throughout. Thank you Toby!

This book provides both theory and practice of Permatculture in a good balance. As an update to an earlier edition it adds useful and timely information. Practical and helpful in advancing the theories and praxis of Permaculture - an idea whose time has come!
As one just beginning the journey into Permaculture I found it very valuable - sparking both further interest and creative exploration - doing the work of Permaculture. There is a good future and it is shining with possibilities!

Gaia's Garden does a nice job of making the basic principles of Permaculture clear without being boring. I've read several other books on the subject and this is by far the most accessible. Perhaps most interesting to me was the advice on developing plant guilds and cultures from the principles up. That's something that most other permaculture books tackle only by example (coming off as bragging, as well), and I found the treatment here to be exemplary. That could be especially useful if you, like me, live in an area that hasn't received a lot of attention yet from the permaculture movement. If you're looking into permaculture, I'd recommend this as a good starting place, a lot of bang for the buck. The only thing holding me back from giving it five stars is that some of the plant lists and tables are rather short. While the book doesn't advertise itself as the end-all be-all book of permaculture data, I sometimes felt a few more table rows or pages would have gone a long way. On the other hand, if you're pioneering permaculture in your area, you'll have to do some research anyway. Its not difficult research, as much of it is available online (often from Ag extension offices or similar government services, although often the plants are considered weeds) and Gaia's Garden does provide more than adequate instruction on how to evaluate the performance of your selections. Of course, as with a lot of permacultural things, patience is key.