Rating: 
Summary: disappointingly slipshod
Review: As a dedicated organic gardener and lawn hater, I waited excitedly for this book to arrive. I knew I was going to love it. I had previously read Permaculture in a Nutshell and liked it. What a disappointment. Gaia's Garden annoyed me so much I couldn't make myself read past page 42, and I rarely can't finish a book. For one thing, short of a couple mentions of the contributions of organic gardening to the development of permaculture, the author presents the world as divided between permaculture and "reliance on resource gobbling poisonous chemicals". What about farms growing organically, which are increasing rapidly? What about community-supported agriculture? What about those of us who already grow a lot of our own food organically? Since these aren't the topic of the book, I don't expect the author to dwell on them, but he could at least acknowledge they exist. I found this alienating, and it lessened his credibility. The frequent anti-mainstream rhetoric really got on my nerves after a while, which surprised me because he was preaching to the converted. By the time I got to the mention of planting to protect from fire and the author's "neighbors, with their power mowers, chainsaws, pyromaniac children, and other incendiary devices," I was ready to give up. OK, maybe he really does have some scary and careless neighbors, but how likely is it that we all live by pyromaniacs? There are so many examples of the author not seeming to present reality or indulging in over-the-top rhetoric that it undermined the interesting information in the book. A major flaw was that important detail and examples were left out frequently, leaving one only able to question the conclusions or unable to figure out how to follow the author's advice. For example, the author mentions areas for growing firewood. Do we cut down the trees or use dropped limbs? Is he suggesting that we heat our homes with the wood to reduce electricity and gas use? If lots of people did this, what would be the effects of all the wood smoke in the air? He mentions that for every 1000 square feet of home, 1 acre of clearcut forest has our name on it. Is this just the building materials for the home, or does it also include the wood products we use in daily life? What else would be necessary for people in North America to have 70 percent of our lumber come from community woodlots, as in Switzerland. Surely we must need some infrastructure for this to work. Is my personally growing trees for lumber on my 1/3-acre suburban lot going to help right now? How can we work toward the goal if we don't know what all is involved? There's a drawing of a "typical [planting] zone layout for a 1/4 acre suburban lot." It doesn't include a garage or a driveway. Is he suggesting we remove the garage and driveway, or was this just carelessness? I wish the author and publisher would tone down the rhetoric, fill in the details, and publish a second edition of this book, because I really feel there's something to this idea. It just wasn't accessible from this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Ecological garden design and food for thought
Review: At last, a readable, information-packed, well-designed book that presents deeply ecological 'gardening' (via Permaculture, an ecological meta-design process) to a broad North American/temperate zone audience. Hemenway carefully structures the book to present ecological observations, elements of ecological designing drawn from natural systems, and then their synthesis in the 'ecological garden', where the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. Though focusing on 'home-scale' designing, the book invites readers to notice how these observations, design elements and syntheses have implications and applications well beyond home-scale. Besides the conceptual richness, the book offers us illuminating windows into a variety of real-life examples. It also provides annotated plant and animal species lists, with ecologically integrated applications, that are relevant to temperate climates (such as North America). This sort of specific information, especially collected in one place, has been until now quite a chore to find. Although there are of course far more relevant species out there than could possibly be included in one book, Gaia's Garden offers more and better temperate zone information than I've seen in collected anywhere before. The bibliography and resources list are the icing on the cake.
Rating:
Summary: A Snapshot of Permaculture
Review: EDITORIAL REVIEW
from Permaculture Activist Magazine, July 2001The first book published in this country in a generation to embrace ecological design of the home landscape, Gaia's Garden is a snapshot of permaculture in America at the turn of the century. Toby Hemenway is a scientist, trained in genetics, who shares with his readers his rapturous enjoyment of the garden. Toby's pleasures are obviously enhanced by his knowledge of the intricate complexities of ecology; he offers this knowledge to the reader in a friendly and muscular style. A graceful foreword by John Todd, aquatic tinkerer and dean of American applied ecologists, gives us a glimpse of the world in a jar, prefiguring Toby's even richer world behind the garden wall, a world that with our help, can "pop" into life: buzzing, blooming, swirling, burgeoning across the landscape. In the mind's eye comes a vision of myriad ecological gardens popping to life all across America. If that vision should come into being, I hope this book will be remembered as one of its champions. Toby's language, particularly his naming of ecological functions in the vernacular, is often memorable: we cast our eyes over a terrain populated by "spike roots, fortress plants, mulchmakers, and shelterbelters." The soil chapter is especially well written, its prose brisk and metaphors well used. This is a better integration of soil ecology than I have read elsewhere, and though the information is by no means new, this version is engaging and helpfully succinct. The book offers an excellent contemporary and well-annotated bibliography, a good glossary of unique terms, and many extensive tables of useful species. I appreciated finding the tables and illustrations listed at the beginning of the text. The illustrations are attractive and clear, even in details, greatly enhancing the already solid text, and the photographic cover is beautiful, eye-catching and endlessly pleasing with its play of subtle colors and floral textures. This is a book you will use and re-use, and enjoy having around for a long time. Peter Bane, Black Mountain, NC.
Rating:
Summary: The best gardening book I've ever bought
Review: For the past few months I've been reading books and learning all kinds of new things. Sustainable agriculture. Edible landscaping. Naturalistic landscaping. Agroforestry. I learned alot, but something seemed missing. And then I found Gaia's Garden. While I was reading it the first time, I kept thinking, "This is it. This is exactly what I've been looking for." This book combines all these other concepts, adds still more, and makes it all easy to understand. There are lots of things I loved about this book. But the most important was the way Mr. Hemenway explains guilds. He gives specific examples, which you can follow pretty much exactly. But then he gives the information to go beyond his examples and create totally new guilds specifically designed for your site. If I had to give up all my gardening books and keep only one, this is the book I'd keep.
Rating:
Summary: The best gardening book I've ever bought
Review: For the past few months I've been reading books and learning all kinds of new things. Sustainable agriculture. Edible landscaping. Naturalistic landscaping. Agroforestry. I learned alot, but something seemed missing. And then I found Gaia's Garden. While I was reading it the first time, I kept thinking, "This is it. This is exactly what I've been looking for." This book combines all these other concepts, adds still more, and makes it all easy to understand. There are lots of things I loved about this book. But the most important was the way Mr. Hemenway explains guilds. He gives specific examples, which you can follow pretty much exactly. But then he gives the information to go beyond his examples and create totally new guilds specifically designed for your site. If I had to give up all my gardening books and keep only one, this is the book I'd keep.
Rating:
Summary: accessible permaculture to homescale gardeners
Review: Gaia's Garden presents revolutionary gardening ideas and plans for the homescale garden. It has opened my mind to the myriad possibilities of growing with nature rather than against her.
Thank you to Hemenway, Todd, and the many pioneers in this field.
Rating:
Summary: The Natural Truth
Review: Gaia's Garden was recently given to me as a birthday gift and very quickly became the most inspirational gift I've received in years. Have you ever had a feeling that things in the world aren't quite right? Of course you have. These concerns are almost certain to plague us in today's commerce and media saturated environment. In recent history there seem to be some natural truths that have become obscured by the dominance of this modern western culture. Our impressions have become narrowed toward accomplishing life tasks instantly. Run full steam ahead and when something gets in your way conquer it.... Yet every so often we slow down enough to catch a glimpse of natural truth. We sit in a window and watch a bee hum across a flower or we trek through the woods and marvel at the perfection of a natural setting. It is at those moments we feel most at peace, why because we KNOW its right. It is the visualization and understanding of this wholly logical system that Toby Hemenway provides in Gaia's Garden. Toby's words illuminate the existence of many patterns and cycles that we are already aware of yet do not see. It is this unlocking of awareness that so excited me. A logic so natural and presented so clearly you can feel it in your bones. Having an education rooted in science I believe Toby has learned very well how to observe truths. In his recent life he has taken this ability and applied it, not to microscopic specimens, but to the whole world around us. But fear not, Gaia's Garden isn't a dry textbook of scientific information. Toby Hemenway has a beautiful gift for simple and eloquent logic. He backs his words by parables and analogy that we all relate to because we see it under our nose every time we walk outside our door. The beauty of the permaculture topic is that it takes very little science to explain the obvious natures between plants, the elements, and living creatures in our environment. All one needs is a willingness to open their eyes. I highly recommend this book to anyone. For me it was a gift of true wisdom...a gift that provided an answer I was looking for... a natural salvation for an unnatural culture. Thanks Toby!
Rating:
Summary: from an armchair permaculturist
Review: I loved this book, showed it to my stepmother and she read it in one sitting. We are both totally inspired, and I've been spending a lot of time day dreaming about permaculture design courses. I live in the city and can't do much more than keep a worm bin, but SOME DAY! I've read Mollison's 'Intro to Permaculture' book, equally inspiring, but perhaps overwhelming due to the scale he discusses. 'Gaia's Garden' is smaller bite, and brings it all together. One thing I liked is that he goes through the design process step by step. I get easily overwhelmed and excited and thus paralyzed, so I found his break down into 'baby steps' encouraging. My only problem is that I wish it had more photographs. But then again, if it did, I wouldn't be as motivated to go and tour the permaculture institutes here in northern california!
Rating:
Summary: Rebirthing Eden
Review: I must admit to a strong personal bias. I hang with the Food Not Lawns collective outta Eugene, Oregon, and Toby Hemenway is a not unfamiliar (and highly regarded) fixture in our neck of the woods. Indeed, a recent article I penned for Oregon Tilth, the newspaper of the Oregon organics community, was largely devoted to the implications of this text. Here's a brief excerpt from a sidebar to that article:
"A recent review of Toby Hemenways' Gaia's Garden remarked on Hemenway's "friendly and muscular style." In person, decorous, attentive and gently spoken, his disarmingly modest manner hides one humdinger of an intellect, informed by an experience born of years transforming a clearcut in Southern Oregon into an edible food forest, and his work as associate editor of The Permaculture Activist, the de facto clearing house for permie factoids in the northern hemisphere.
"Trained as a geneticist, Hemenway's approach bears the hallmark of a rigorous scientific training, but whereas most prior permaculture texts tend to resemble fat, dry textbooks, Hemenway's touch is deft and approachable - a useful quality, given the vast, rich, detailed tapestry of ideas he presents that lends context, meaning and direction to the process of playing god."
If you're interested in knowing more, the full text of the article is at: ...
Suffice to say, within the Paradise Gardening community hereabouts, we consider this text a seminal work, and refer to it as the de facto workbook for visionary gardeners.
n.
Rating:
Summary: This is my Gardening Bible.
Review: I thought I was getting a book that would negate the need for an entire shelf of gardening books, and it's true that I will probably never buy another gardening book. On the other hand, I must now buy books about Chicken Tractors, Worm Composting, Soil Building, How to Buy Land in the Country, etc. Now, I need to subscribe to a Permaculture magazine. And I need to take some Ecology courses. And . . . here I thought I was going to save money! :-) I couldn't be happier. Hemenway has disrupted my whole lifestyle for the better. There is enough info here to get me started on the right path, but he has only whetted my appetite for more information about permaculture. But at least I now have a pretty garden to sit in while I read those other books and munch on fruit I grew myself!
|
