Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home [Paperback]

Judith Larner Lowry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2007

Judith Lowry's voice and experiences make a rich matrix for essays that include discussions of wildflower gardening, the ecology of native grasses, wildland seed-collecting, principles of natural design, and plant/animal interactions. This lyrical and articulate mix of the practical and the poetic combines personal story, wildland ecology, restoration gardening practices, and native plant horticulture.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Judith Lowry is among the most graceful of the new matchmakers who are arranging marriages between ourselves and the unique landscapes around us. Lowry gently guides us home by teaching us how to learn from the plants that grow wild outside our doorways. If native plant gardening is the way you'd like to spend your courtship of place, this book illuminates better than any I've seen the delights and surprises of such a path."--Freeman House, author of Totem Salmon

"Gardening with a Wild Heart has earned my highest recommendation. Judith Larner Lowry provides an insightful, inspirational, and timely account of the need to understand and foster our ecological heritage through the lens of one's own garden. Ideas and concepts important to the home restoration gardener are presented and discussed in a thought-provoking and enjoyable manner. The author's practical methods and down-to-earth observations are used to both illuminate and clarify many of the themes of this compelling book."--Bart O'Brien, Director of Horticulture, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Claremont, California

"This book is destined to become a classic for the gardener's shelf both for its inspired and enlightened language, and its acute observation and practical information. Judith Lowry introduces us to the plants of her restoration garden, with their names and descriptions of their uniqueness. She gives us a heavenly view of California wildflower fields and describes the special beauty of seeds and the delicate taste of native plants. This is a living book, aware of the dignity of the plants themselves, with a love of place and value of what it is to be 'home'."--Joanne Kyger, author of Just Space

From the Back Cover

"Judith Lowry is among the most graceful of the new matchmakers who are arranging marriages between ourselves and the unique landscapes around us. Lowry gently guides us home by teaching us how to learn from the plants that grow wild outside our doorways. If native plant gardening is the way you'd like to spend your courtship of place, this book illuminates better than any I've seen the delights and surprises of such a path." (Freeman House, author of Totem Salmon) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 267 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 2 edition (March 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520251741
• ISBN-13: 978-0520251748
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #888,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book every California gardener should read, January 10, 2004

By 

Peter Brigham (Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home (Paperback)

A Californian living overseas, I happened to find this book while looking for ideas for a piece of property I own in California. Initially I had "cottage garden" in mind; later, my thinking evolved to more exotic tropical plants. This wonderful book was the first step in my complete conversion to the native plant movement. California is an ecological "island" with an incredible richness of native plants: 6,000 species, of which something like 2,000 live nowhere else. Yet these have been decimated by exotic weeds, development and large-scale agriculture. We should be proud of the native California plants that are now prized by landscapers and gardeners all over the world: the redwood, douglas fir, monterey pine, lilac, and all wildflowers especially the poppy, our State Flower (to name but a few). Yet despite the growing momentum of the native plant movement in the state, many gardeners are indifferent to the debate.

Look for the tufted 6-foot stalks of pampas grass as you drive around California: this aggressive invader from Peru is still being planted by gardeners and landscapers. Consider that eight million acres in the state (and growing) are covered with yellow star thistle, another exotic weed. Aggressive non-native plants out-compete natives (even to the point of extinction) and contribute to the decline of the environment, often in the form of soil erosion.

The most important lesson from this thought-provoking book is that we are interconnected, and the decisions we take on our postage-stamp properties affect the entire environment. We can make a difference. What we do on our little plots can do a lot to restore the ecological well-being of the entire state. As we see the birds and other animals - creatures that evolved specifically for our native flora - return to reclaim the land, parcel by parcel, we can say we have done something positive for the state of California.

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lovely to read, but fell short of expectations, March 29, 2000

By 

Angela "Love to learn languages" (Pacifica, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home (Paperback)

I found this book very lyrical and inspiring, but it falls short of helping the beginning native plant gardener learn how to become a "backyard restorationist". The book is focused more on the author's personal gardening journey, which is lovely if you are looking for a travel-writing type of format, but I personally would have preferred more details and pictures about how an individual can recognize the native plants to her area, how to collect seeds (where legal), what plants naturally occur together (can we plant wildflowers at the feet of coyote bush and expect them to survive?) and plant lists.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, but missing pictures for identification, April 10, 2000

By 

Brent Fulgham (Ventura, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home (Hardcover)

I live in Southern California, and have begun to take an interest in planting more native species in my yard and garden. I picked this book up at the Getty Museum after visiting their beautiful gardens.

This bug is full of important information, and taught me (to my chagrin) that I had been guilty of planting lots of invasive alien species in my yard.

Armed with a new resolve to "go native" I set about trying to find and identify the many native plants she describes in her book. Unfortunately, the book has only a limited set of color plates showing some native flowers. And even those images generally show multiple plants, with a description such as "california poppie, five-spot, and baby blue eyes near coyote scrub, California fescue and native bunch grass". While this is helpful, I was unable to tell which plant was which (aside from the poppies).

To use this book to its fullest, you need a good pictorial guide to California plants. Unfortunately I don't know of one. Hopefully a more knowledgable reader can point me in the right direction.