Requiem for a Lawnmower: And Other Essays on Easy Gardening With Native Plants [Hardcover]

Sally Wasowski (Author), Andy Wasowski (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Wasowski, author of Landscaping with Native Texas Plants (Gulf, 1988), considers herself a "botanical missionary" on the subject of native plants and hopes that these essays will convince more people to use them in naturalistic and low-maintenance landscapes. She offers brief discussions of topics such as xeriscaping, preserving a wooded lot during construction, and using native plants for various garden styles and purposes. However, many of these plants are more appropriate to the Southwest than to the national audience Wasowski hopes to address. She also seems inconsistent in her philosophy of natural design, arguing on the one hand that native plant gardening does not preclude the use of introduced species and on the other that "a natural landscape should be composed of only those plants that would have naturally occurred on that site." This remains an excellent choice for libraries in the Southwest but optional elsewhere.
- Beth Clewis, Prince William P.L., Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 187 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Pub; 1ST edition (September 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087833811X
• ISBN-13: 978-0878338115
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,825,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sell your lawnmower!, May 28, 2003

By 

Valerie Adolph "Coast Journal" (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Requiem for a Lawnmower: And Other Essays on Easy Gardening With Native Plants (Hardcover)

This is a book of short, readable essays about gardening with native plants. Its a how-to manual telling you how NOT to spend your weekends cutting grass. The writer, who lives in Texas, uses native plants of that state to illustrate her points, but its easy enough for people living elsewhere to substitute local species. Because not only does she tell us that lawns are an ecological wasteland, she goes on to show the reader that many of our garden plants are brought in from other countries and other regions. Not only are they unsuited to our local area and prone to die because they are not used to our soil and climate, but they lead us to ignore equally lovely plants that are at home in our region and perfectly suited not only to our climate and soil but also to our local ecology. They have adapted over hundreds of years to feed and shelter our local wildlife.

The writer, a landscape designer, writer and teacher has a crisp style and keeps her essays short and salted with humour. She has an understanding not just of the ecological blind spots of our times, but of how they came to be. She makes her case for greater ecological responsibility convincingly, with the added incentive of ecologically sound gardening being much less work. So why are there so many green deserts in our suburbs?