Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community
by Heather Coburn Flores

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community
List Price: $25.00
Category: Book
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Book Summary Information

Author: Heather Coburn Flores
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-01
ISBN: 193339207X
Number of pages: 344
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Product features:

Book Reviews of Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

Book Review: A poor how-to guide
Summary: 2 Stars

Having recently purchased and read 3 books on urban and community gardening, it is easy to state that this book is the poorest of the 3. To sum up the difference quickly: the primary tone and goal of the book is activism and not actual gardening.

However, it also is not a very good activism book as it shows the anger and frustration of the writer first and foremost. For a book on building communities, it quickly alienates and attacks people, corporations, government, etc.

There are many pieces of information that have value within the pages, but the content is commonly far too general. The tone and style lend toward a constant introduction with vague generalities then followed by a quick picture or chart of detailed information with little further in-depth reference to it.

There are few personal stories of success or of how the methods included were utilized by the author. It is a book that reads like someone talking at you vs. talking with you. Hardly conversational, it reads like a manifesto vs. today's society.

There is much to change about our methods of food production today, but this book starts primarily by trying to make its reader angry and turning them to the cause at hand. From my perspective, less than 20% of the book had value. It isn't useless, but the writing style, the content and the apparent goal of the book do not serve the subject well.

Summary of Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

Gardening can be a political act. Creativity, fulfillment, connection, revolution-it all begins when we get our hands in the dirt.

Food Not Lawns combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens."

But Food Not Lawns doesn't begin and end in the seed bed. This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden-simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community-to all aspects of life. Plant "guerilla gardens" in barren intersections and medians; organize community meals; start a street theater troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; work with children to create garden play spaces.

Flores cares passionately about the damaged state of our environment and the ills of our throwaway society. In Food Not Lawns, she shows us how to reclaim the earth one garden at a time.

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