Rating: 
Summary: The essence of Permaculture, with loads of specifics
Review: Toby Hemingway has taken on a large task: explaining ecological gardening in a clear, accessible manner. Having taught Permaculture Design myself, I was curious how Toby would approach the subject. I came away quite impressed. He uses his deep experience with the subject to make a complex, multi-layered concept easy to grasp and easy to implement.Building gardens that function the way healthy ecosystems do will reduce your work load, reduce the toxins you need to control pests, and will yield both beauty and bounty. This book is the guide you have been waiting for. Like a trusted friend with dirt under his fingernails, Toby leads you gently and wisely toward a much more pleasant existence.
Rating:
Summary: The essence of Permaculture, with loads of specifics
Review: Toby Hemingway has taken on a large task: explaining ecological gardening in a clear, accessible manner. Having taught Permaculture Design myself, I was curious how Toby would approach the subject. I came away quite impressed. He uses his deep experience with the subject to make a complex, multi-layered concept easy to grasp and easy to implement. Building gardens that function the way healthy ecosystems do will reduce your work load, reduce the toxins you need to control pests, and will yield both beauty and bounty. This book is the guide you have been waiting for. Like a trusted friend with dirt under his fingernails, Toby leads you gently and wisely toward a much more pleasant existence.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: Wow, this is a way better book than I was expecting. Startlingly relevant to what I was wanting, in fact, but not something I was looking for, because I didn't think there were any books out there like this.
The book introduces itself by talking about how most gardens just feel like an artificial mimicry of nature, with their orderly hedges, manicured lawns, and grid-like rows of flowers. Then there are some rare, special gardens that feel like they are part of nature. The difference is that the latter gardens have designed to be an ecological microcosm.
There's still a minimal amount of human interference involved, such as providing the beginnings upon which nature can build, and occasionally guiding and controlling some things so they don't get out of hand. You plan the garden not only by what colors and forms are appealing to the human eye (as artificial-looking gardens are designed) but also which plants are good "companions" to one another. Since it's a complete microcosm, animals are involved: wild birds and mammals are attracted by the plants and seeds you have there, and also predators of those animals who control their populations, and so on, so that balance is acheived without having to poison or shut out any of those animals. It's awkward to sum up all the many ideas and anecdotes involved with it, but it's an excellent book, and exactly what I was wanting.
What caught me by surprise was that it also talked about domestic animals... including chickens. It summarizes how "chicken tractors" work. (I've read about those before; basically you just have the birds scratch, weed, and till the soil of a certain patch of land, and then when that spot's done you move the birds on to the next area.) It goes on to tell the sorts of plants that are edible for chickens that you can have planted around them!
I might have to buy this. There's a lot of good stuff in it, beside that.
The funny thing is, I only checked it out because I thought it would have pretty pictures. (The sort you really start to want in the winter.) I wasn't expecting anything so intuitive.
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