The Blooming Lawn: Creating a Flower Meadow (Paperback)

by Yvette Verner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Delightful and inspiring, The Blooming Lawn will show you how to transform any vacant land, large or small, into a rich, diverse habitat for animals, insects, and birds while restoring essential biodiversity to a patch of the Earth with your own hands. The Verners bought a small patch of land close to their home in England and gradually transformed it, with help from nature, into a verdant, blooming meadow attracting badgers, deer, and a wide variety of insects, birds, and butterflies. They describe how they designed it, selected native plants and trees, and spent many enjoyable hours observing wildlife in their own self-created meadow of wildflowers, trees, and special hedges. In a time when large fields of single-species plants dominate agricultural land, the need for a safe and healthy environment for an appropriate variety of natural, local wildlife is more important than ever. The Blooming Lawn will show you how one couple created such an inviting and rich space and how you can do the same yourself. --Mark A. Hetts

From Library Journal
This is not a how-to book but rather an encouraging story of one gardener's approach to meadow gardening in southern England. Verner cordially takes the reader from her initial idea of "doing our bit for the environment" all the way to the end product?a successful biodiverse meadow that has supported a variety of flora and fauna for over seven years. Along the way, the reader learns something of Verner's plants and the maintenance of her meadow. Just as she invites numerous school children into her meadow, she invites the reader along on her wildlife-watching excursions and describes craft projects using meadow by-products. Helpful lists include North American addresses and species, but those looking for more extensive how-to information on creating meadows and prairies in the United States may want to use Stevie Daniels's The Wild Lawn Handbook (LJ 4/1/95). Recommended for public libraries.?Bonnie Poquette, Appleton P.L., WI
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890132187
• ISBN-13: 978-1890132187
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,278,113 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good for the British Isles., August 23, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Michigan, United States) - See all my reviews

This is yet another book relevant to Great Britain but being sold in North America without any warning that its information is largely irrelevant here. The idea behind a wildflower meadow instead of a lawn is to be promoted anywhere. But the species suggested for planting and the animals that will visit them to not make sense to the American reader. Many of the suggested wildflowers are in fact invasive weeds in North America. Even the style of meadow design lacks imagination. This is probably a good book for readers in Europe, but will mostly frustrate the American who wants to create an environmentally responsible wildflower meadow. Surely for serious North Americans there are better books describing how to create natural spaces.