Customer Reviews

Safe Sex in the Garden and Other Propositions for an Allergy-Free World

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have allergies and I found this book fascinating! I heard the author, Tom Ogren, interviewed on NPR's Weekend Edition with Linda Werthheimer. After hearing that interview I immediately wanted to read this book. It was every bit as good as I expected, better. It is a very clearly written book, but there is so much new information in it that I may have to read it three or four times for it all to sink in.
The title of this book comes from the discovery that male plants, especially male street trees, are raining allergenic pollen on us all. Male plants are used since they don't make seeds. Female plants, which are all pollen-free, are shunned. The chapter on "How to tell the boys from the girls," is great!
In some ways it reminds me a bit of The Botany of Desire, another book that mixes horticulture and health. I'm also going to buy the author's first book, Allergy-Free Gardening, a book I've heard nothing but praise for. In Safe Sex in the Garden there are many tips for living allergy-free. The horticulture is excellent too and it is completely clear that the author is a botanist of considerable standing. I looked him up on a Google search and found that he has landscaped an American Lung Association headquarters (in Richmond, VA), that the USDA urban foresters use his plant/allergy scale, and that county asthma coalitions hire him to produce pollen-free landscapes at elementary schools.
This a very fine book and I intend to recommend it to all my friends who garden, who enjoy exciting botany, and certainly to anyone with asthma or allergies.

I flat out love this book! It is a real kick, lots of neat stories about real life interactions between people and plants. This might not sound like zippy material but actually, it is.
I already owned Mr Ogren's earlier book, Allergy-Free Gardening, a book I simply can't do without. This one though, Safe Sex in the Garden, is more personal, very fun to read.
There is a wealth of information here that you can't find anywhere else. Nothing else is even close really. No one understands plant sex better than this author. I live in Berkeley, California, and around here it seems like quite a few people are discovering these books. At least half a dozen of my friends have now read this and all of us are crazy about it. It is an important book. I am a teacher, have allergies, and am very interested in urban ecology, the biology of the city. This fine book has expanded my understanding of horticulture, medicine, nature, and the manipulation of our landscapes. I recommend it to all teachers, to those interested in gardening, health, to anyone who wants to learn some new and different aspects about the world around us. And yes, after you read this book, like me, I'm sure there will be some changes made in your own yards. This book is too cool!

Since I live in an apartment in San Francisco I dont have yards or lawns or any of the more typical gardens, but I still found this book to be thought provoking and useful. On my balcony I have quite a few potted plants and I got rid of one of them as soon as I realized it was a male yew pine that produced pollen that was both allergenic and toxic. Inside the apartment we have houseplants and I will be making some changes here too. One of the chapters in Safe Sex in the Garden deals with indoor air quality and plants that either produce harmful VOCs (volatile organic compounds) or that consume these VOCs. The ficus tree I have been laboring for years to keep green, will go, replaced by something more benign.
In this book are good chapters on stress and allergies, on feng shui gardens, on going organic, animal allergies, smog trees, outdoor mold reduction, skin rashes, poisonous plants, OPALS, groundcovers, and of course, how to tell the boys from the girls. The boys, you see, produce pollen, while the girls, although they might be a bit messy at times, they never produce pollen. Pollen is a male thing, in fact pollen is the male plants version of, well, you figure it out!
I have long been interested in urban ecology and this book is easily one of the best and most important documents on the subject. The research that went into this book was not backed or directed by any large organization or university. This enabled the author, Ogren, to do it his own way, to look at things as they came. I think this explains a great deal as to why he discovered so much that so many others in medicine and horticulture so clearly missed. Read the chapter on the effects of global warming on pollen production, for example. Fascinating.
With any luck at all, this book will be a big hit and will be sold far and wide. The author is and has been apparently attacked by some as being too political for a science writer. I would say though, more power to him, go for it. Someone needs to let the cat out of the bag about this exploding allergy/asthma situation and he is the one to do it.
I also enjoyed a great deal the sections on plant sex in history. Curious to see how scientists such as Gregor Mendel and even Charles Darwin, writing in prudish times, how both of them avoided mentioning plant sex, avoiding even the mention of pollen. My vote for best line in this book though, is this one: Considering that huge amounts of allergy and asthma are caused by excessive wind-blown pollen, it might not be too far fetched to say that pollen-allergy is no doubt the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world.
An excellent book!

This and Ogren's previous book, "Allergy-Free Gardening" should be on everyone's shelf, whether they garden or not. If you want to know why allergy incidence has quadrupled in the last few decades and asthma deaths have reach alarming numbers, this book explains it. Ogren's OPALS ranking scale can help us choose appropriate trees for our own gardens, plus he gives lists of recommended ground covers, poisonous plants, "super trees" and discusses pet allergies and all sorts of other relevant topics.

The book is well-written and easy to understand, even when your sinuses are clogged and your eyes are running.

Who knew pollen could do such devastating damage? This is a uniquely useful and truthful guide to a gigantic environmental problem we are all faced with--the unwitting pollution of our landscape via planting the "wrong" sex trees and plants. Overlook the cutsy title: Ogren's book is hard-hitting, wryly funny, and jam-packed with accessible info. Besides being fascinating and disquieting, this book offers real solutions. Imagine.

You have to love a book with a title like this. You might think a book about allergies and plant sex would be dull, but Ogren's writing style is lively and he knows how to convey information in a fun way. I wish he'd been my science teacher in high school! Everyone who's thinking about doing some landscaping, or has allergies, should read this. I know it's made me think more carefully about what I plant.

Safe Sex in the Garden by Thomas Leo Ogren is a terrific book. I have already read the
entire book twice and I expect that I'll read it several times more. It is fun to read, zippy
and not what you'd expect from a book about trees, shrubs, lawns and human health. There
is a ton of new, great information here that was not in his first book, Allergy-Free Gardening.
Like his other book, this is one that every gardener and every parent will want to own.
If anyone in your house has allergies, by all means get this book. If you have pets and
are concerned about their health, you'll find it excellent. The section here on poisonous plants and poisonous ollen
is the best I've ever seen. The chapter on plants that cause skin rashes is deep and very
good too. I loved the sections on plant sex, which are unusual, often funny, and very
important to know about too. If you care about your own health and that of your family, you
need to read this book. It will open your eyes I promise, and the information here is all from
Ogren's own research, not your same old material at all. Plant sex it turns out has a dramatic effect on our own health. Check out this book . It's a real winner!

This is one cool book. It is packed with information about health, how to reduce stress in your life, how to keep yourself and your pets and your whole family healthy. The plant propagators who keep nailing us with more and more high allergy male cloned trees, the ones that swamp us over and over with allergenic pollen---these guys get nailed in this expose book.
This is a gardening book, and a mighty good one too, but it is a whole lot more than just that. This is the start of something bigger, a rebellion against the old status quo of how we landscape our cities. If you have allergies, like I do, and you're just sick and tired of taking ever more and more medicine, read this one. The nursery industry, a 100 billion dollar big business in the US, keeps pushing and selling street trees that are literally killing thousands and making millions more sick with asthma and allergies. I've had enough of that and I want to see some tough pollen control ordinances come down. If the nursery people don't give a hoot about our health, then we need to force them to do so.
In this book of plant sex and human health, the sexual imbalances of today's landscapes are clearly and forcefully outlined. It all makes perfect sense too. This is one interesting book and the author can educate and entertain at the same time. I was totally impressed!

Safe Sex in the Garden by Thomas Ogren is by all means a five star book. There is so much good material in this book that it is hard to know where to start. I don't have allergies, but I have several friends and relatives who do, and this book will help all of them. I also have a dog and a cat, and there is an excellent section in the book on allergies that our pets get. After reading this book there are several major changes I'll be making in my own yard, for the sake of my animals. I do like to garden and there are lots of interesting gardening ideas here, along with so many important health factors.
I heard this author on the radio a few nights ago and it was one of the most interesting and different interviews I've ever heard on radio. His take on landscaping and gardening is so unusual, so different, and yet it all makes perfect sense. In this book there are many true to life stories, and for a book on gardening, it is surprisingly fun to read. I was also especially interested to read about trees that contribute to smog, and trees that do the exact opposite. Also of special interest was the part about how death rates jump so much on high pollen count days. It seems that allergenic pollen causes much more harm than simply asthma and allergies.
Also worth noting are the extensive chapters on poisonous plants, poisonous pollen, and on garden plants that cause itching and skin rashes. I have already lent my copy of Safe Sex in the Garden to a friend who suffers from these itchy rashes.
This is a very good book, and I expect that it will become something of a garden book classic.

Safe Sex in the Garden should be required reading for anybody that is in any way involved with making decisions on what plants will be part of both our public and private spaces. Statistics only confirm how pervasive allergies are in the Los Angeles area and the toll this condition takes on the quality of our daily lives and work. I wish for full disclosure from plant growers regarding the potential health impact of the supposed convenience of this cultivars and more widespread knowledge on what company each plant should keep. Thank you. This book could improve the lives of many of us.