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 Location:  Home » Landscaping » Garden Design » Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a CommunityJanuary 6, 2009  


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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
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Author: Heather Coburn Flores
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Category: Book

List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.90
You Save: $10.10 (40%)
Buy New/Used from $14.86

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars(19 reviews)
Sales Rank: 21066

Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 344
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 8 x 0.9

ISBN: 193339207X
Dewey Decimal Number: 631.58
EAN: 9781933392073
ASIN: 193339207X

Publication Date: October 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
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.


Customer Reviews:   Read 14 more reviews...

1 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money!   October 9, 2008
  1 out of 7 found this review helpful

It's not that the information in this book is bad or wrong, it's just that it can be obtained from any permaculture website in about 5 minutes. The book is very limited. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!


4 out of 5 stars Food in your own yard   August 17, 2008
  1 out of 3 found this review helpful

This is a interesting lots of help starting you own garden in your front yard or back.



5 out of 5 stars Wonderful Book   August 11, 2008
  2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book has so many great ideas that I just had to have it. She makes many great "eco" points that had me going "ah, I never thought of that." I'm very glad I purchased this book.


1 out of 5 stars Impractical and Incomplete Advice   August 5, 2008
  11 out of 15 found this review helpful

I was very excited about ordering this book. I envisioned it would gave step by step, practical advice on how to transform my suburban yard into a lush garden. I was very disappointed, however, to find it full of advice that was either too vauge, or too complicated for the average home owner.
Ms. Flores starts off the book preaching about environmental concern. She could have spared the reader, since anyone who would buy this book is already concerned about their eco-system. Several pages of the beginning of the book give spacey, loose instructions on observing your community and yard space, as if the average reader has unlimited time to stare at her yard, and go on excursions for resources.

Flores goes on with her irrational ideas, giving several suggestions which are ILLEGAL, like diving into dumpsters and stealing off of thrift store lots. She also devotes quite a few paragraphs to setting up a water conservation system, which starts with recycling bathwater, which BTW, she also mentions is illegal in many cities. There's no in-between or alternate suggestions given. Flores, instead goes rambling on about elaborate modifications that the average person would not do to begin a garden.

This book might be good for those who have extensive knowledge of gardening, lots and lots of free time, and advanced mechanical skills, who want an all-or-nothing approach, but it offers very little for a beginner.



1 out of 5 stars lightweight   July 2, 2008
  2 out of 9 found this review helpful

definitely not a how to book. there are no pictures - i would have liked to see pictures of her garden....


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