Book 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:
An inspired 40-something.......2007-09-04
Food Not Lawns speaks to my heart and has inspired me in my home gardening. I bought copies for two dear gardening friends who are in their 20's and 30's, and they are also excited by the ideas presented in the book. The author takes a holistic view of community and gardening, of working with Nature as an orchestra of forces influencing each other and working collectively together. Heather Flores encourages us to think out of the box and some might find that uncomfortable, but I still think her vision and sense of hope is so needed in our world today. Share this book with family and friends!
completely false advertising.......2007-07-05
I see that this books appears a hit with many reviewers, but I am unfortunately going to dissent. I was excited to read this book when it arrived and was subsequently dissappointed in the overall quality of the work as a whole. First and foremost, Flores leaves out a great deal of detail with regard to the actual work involved in any form of agriculture, be it animal husbandry, permaculture, or anything between. I say this not only as an avid reader, but also an environmental studies major reviewing the work for a class as well. Second, Flores' method of combining the topics of agriculture and social change is facetious at best, with no real segway from the former to the latter. In other words, this is literally two unconnected books sharing the same binding. Finally, and most disheartening of all, the work gives faulty advice at best, especially with regard to her advice on dealing with numerous aspects of gardening (traditional and permaculture), pending jail time, and conflict management strategies(with latter are potentially dangerous). I will also note that I resold this book immediately upon completion due to the above. Those interested would be better served to read The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing, or other such related books by other reputable authors such as Joseph Jenkins, Eliot Coleman, Louise Riotte, or John and Martha Storey. In short, do not purchase this book if you are serious about either agriculture or social change.
if you are over 40 skip it... so gen X.......2007-05-25
This is a very shallow book by the new generation of writers that find fault with everything done in the twenty years before they were born,
Its very shallow, big type and very preachy.
If you are interested in gardening, try Giaas garden, a much more serious study of permiculture.
In this rambling book, the aurthor boasts of not making over 8 k a year, but inherited the money to buy her farm!
I liked camping living until I was thirty, now I am 45 and really like my freezer and new stove.( yes, I have my own three hens and belong to a CSA)
I know a number of the original flower/farm people, and as they got older they liked having a few more comforts.
So this is one of the new gen X books, shallow to a fault. Nothing but sound bites.
the aurthor sems all hyped about third world living, but I am not sure she has ever been to a third world and seen how hard that style of life is,,it is easy to glamorius the distant!!!
Not just Gardening--A guide to Activism and Environmentalism.......2007-01-23
I picked up this book to learn practical application of permacultural principles applied to urban yard scales--and there is a wealth of such information here. However, I do feel like Flores preaches just a little too much about the environmental destruction and political problems currently plaguing our country. In my view, anyone picking up a book called Food Not Lawns probably is already well-versed in such issues, and Flores is essentially preaching to the converted. That said, this book DOES have tons of practical information, and I would recommend it as an excellent counterbalance and companion book to Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden.
Keys to change any reader can use........2006-12-14
For activist readers who believe activism is a political pursuit, FOOD NOT LAWNS: HOW TO TURN YOUR YARD INTO A GARDEN AND YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD INTO A COMMUNITY offers a different viewpoint, maintaining that growing food where you live is a key method of becoming a food activist in the community. Chapters advocate planting home and community gardens with an eye to drawing important connections between the politics of a home or community garden and the wider politics of usage, consumption, and sustainability. Another rarity: chapters promote small, easy changes in lifestyles to achieve a transition between personal choice and political activism at the community level, providing keys to change any reader can use.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Book Description
"Ted Steinberg proves once again that he is a master storyteller as well as our foremost environmental historian."—Mike Davis
The rise of the perfect lawn represents one of the most profound transformations in the history of the American landscape. American Green, Ted Steinberg's witty exposé of this bizarre phenomenon, traces the history of the lawn from its explosion in the postwar suburban community of Levittown to the present love affair with turf colorants, leaf blowers, and riding mowers. 47 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Fabulous.......2007-08-08
This is one of the most entertaining and informative books I have read in years. Steinberg, a clearly gifted author, has taken a seemingly mundane topic and written something that has depth, is interesting, and very humorous. I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style. I will read it again in the future.
Witty expose of the American lawn.......2007-07-04
This book makes it clear that Americans are very odd people, at least when it comes to lawns. Not only do Americans like to have patches of green around their homes, but they like *big* patches of green that require lots of attention to keep green.
In this book, Ted Steinberg tells you everything that you might want to know about these lawns. He begins the story with the cookie-cutter homes and lawns of Levittowns. These aspired to reproduce English formal gardens in the New World, but in a mass-produced way. Then Steinberg moves to the spread of lawns across the country, and the extensive use of power lawnmowers, fertilizers and pesticides, and intensive watering. For many Americans, lawn care borders on the obsessive-compulsive, and this is fed by the lawn care industry, especially Scotts. Golf courses represent another, equally compulsive, variation on the home lawn theme.
This book is a well-written expose of the American lawn. It's also quite funny in two ways. First, Americans are funny when they take care of the lawns, so Steinberg can stick just to the facts and be funny. Second, he is good at making funny side comments, often tongue-in-cheek.
There are serious sides. The environmental consequences of the American lawn include intensive water use in the desert southwest, lawn chemical runoff, lawnmower air pollution, leaf-blower noise pollution, and the spread of invasive species at the expense of native species. Lawns also come at a significant cost in safety, thanks to power mowers, especially riding mowers.
After that indictment, Steinberg concludes with a vision of eco-friendly, safe landscaping - - one that even includes lawns.
You don't have to water your lawn everday.......2006-09-29
As a reader of Crabgrass Frontier many years ago, I always knew that our lawns today are much, much different than what Americans of the first 150 years would know and while sitting through a recent City Council meeting in which it was determined that one subdivision was watering their lawns with about 14 feet of water a year, I knew there had to be a better way to maintain your lawn. Steinberg takes you from the history of lawns to history of lawn care. Along the way, Steinberg exposes you to some of the obsessive behavior of lawn care fanatics to the efforts of the anti-leaf blower campaigns. Steinberg exposes that most of our green lawns and lawn care habits are formed by marketing of companies likes Scotts and LawnChem or rely on plentiful low cost labor. Steinberg takes the lawn mower industry to task over mower safety (in a chapter that can be hard to read, especially if you have kids). Towards the end, Steinberg even takes on the native plant supporters, before telling you about his father's "Enlightenment Lawn."
As one who doesn't fertilize, water and spread bug killer on the lawn excessively, I can feel a bit alone in the neighborhood, however, Steinberg's book lets me know that I have plenty of company
Hard-hitting, funny, insightful, and thought-provoking.......2006-03-17
This is a brilliant book from one of the greatest environmental historians writing today. Combining muck-raking expose, insightful cultural and social history, and a wonderful sense of humor, it is a real page-turner. It will change the way you look at your -- and your neighbor's -- front yard forever.
Book Description
Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960, and as Sherrilyn Ifill argues, the effects of this racial trauma continue to resound. While the lynchings were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for blacks, are equally pernicious. Ifill traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this history is, and issues a clarion call for the many American communities with histories of racial violence to be proactive in facing this legacy.
Inspired by South Africa"s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides concrete ideas for communities, including placing gravestones on the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, establishing mandatory school programs on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses were destroyed in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed roadmap to help communities finally confront lynching"s long shadow by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation efforts.
"In calm, objective, but no less moving detail, Ifill"s book provides the stories that illuminate the photographs and postcards of lynchings."âDerrick Bell, author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well
Average customer rating:
- Informative, an easy & fascinating read
- Inspirational and informative!
- scholarly - good for critical discussions
- It changed my habits
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Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony, Second Edition
F. Herbert Bormann ,
Diana Balmori , and
Gordon T. Geballe
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession
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American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn
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The Wild Lawn Handbook: Alternatives to the Traditional Front Lawn
ASIN: 0300086946 |
Book Description
The authors in this book argue that our dedication to maintaining beautiful lawns is contributing to the serious environmental problems facing the planet, and they offer strategies for creating and caring for aesthetically pleasing and ecologically sound lawns. This new edition updates the original text and adds a chapter and illustrations showing what progress has been made in the ecological management of landscapes over the past decade.
Customer Reviews:
Informative, an easy & fascinating read.......2003-04-08
This book's forté is 2 things: Its' explanation of the negative impact of millions of monoculture, traditional lawns - not on just the environment, but on the lifestyles and wallets of those who tend them. And then it offers sound advice (which does -NOT- start with "get rid of your existing grass") which can be easily followed by the average homeowner. The solutions proposed in this book are not radical, unattractive schemes, and most of the suggestions offered will result in a BETTER LOOKING YARD and savings of time and money. I read it from cover to cover twice. I hope to soon have my yard working for me, instead of me working for my yard.
I found a good compliment to this book in "The Lawn, A History of an American Obsession," by Virginia Scott Jenkins. If you're interested in more of the history and background of the entire lawn concept, (and some neat old pictures of advertising,) you'll love this book. It explains how agriculture, chemical companies, the garden industry, golfing, housing developments, world wars, etc... and the advent of new inventions have come together to result in an entire lifestyle revolving around 'the lawn.' The complete answer to the question, "Why do we have lawns, and what did people used to have around their property?" Read this, then read "Redesigning" to see what having all these lawns does to the world and the people in them, (and, of course, suggestions for improving things in your own little slice of the world.)
Inspirational and informative!.......2002-02-22
This is a wonderful resource about a very important environmental problem - the American lawn. The diagrams are especially clear and complete. It provides the history of the lawn, scientific background about the problems associated with the lawn, and also gives very practical advice about how to create a Freedom Lawn. I initially got this book (first edition) from the library, but decided this was one I wanted to have for my personal reference - especially since the second edition includes updated information.
scholarly - good for critical discussions.......2001-10-26
Most Americans do not realize how much their tastes in gardening have been affected by marketing on the part of lawn care companies. Nor do they seem to realize what environmental havoc they wreak through the lawn care practices preached on TV, and promulgated every time they watch the Masters Golf tournament on TV and think they should try to emulate those greens and fairways at home. They have been seduced into an unrealistic world that wastes their time (why mow?), money (why put fertilizer down 4 times a year?) and the environment (Do they really even have the weeds or bugs in their lawn that the 'weed and feed', and 'grub killers' are prescribed for? If not, why are they paying extra for the privilege of putting down toxins they don't even need?)
This book is a scholarly approach to reviewing the problem - highly recommended if you tend to ask "WHY?" before "How much?"
It changed my habits.......2000-03-28
This book was truely a revalation for me. I consider my self to fairly conservation minded, yet I had know idea how much more I could do. This book taught me, more than anything else, that it truely is the little things that count. I liked it so much I gave copies to my family of christmass.
Book Description
Setting the Lawn on Fire, the first novel by critically acclaimed writer Mack Friedman, trails its narrator through his obsessions with sex, drugs, art, and poison. Ivan, a young Jewish boy from Milwaukee, embarks on a journey of sexual discovery that leads him from Wisconsin to Alaska, Philadelphia, and Mexico through stints as a fishery worker, artist, and finally a hustler who learns to provide the blank canvas for other people’s dreams. The result is a new kind of coming-of-age story that sees passion from every angle because its protagonist is every kind of lover: the seducer and the seduced, the pornographer and the model, the hunter and the prey, the trick and the john. In the end, Setting the Lawn on Fire is also something rare—a fully realized, contemporary romance that illuminates the power of desire and the rituals of the body, the brain, and the heart that attempt to contain our passions.
Customer Reviews:
Coming-Of-Age.......2006-12-24
BOOK REVIEW
Friedman, Mack, Setting the Lawn on Fire, Terrace Books, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2206.
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
Coming of age is never an easy thing. Some of us managed to do it with style but the majority of us remember those years of moving into adulthood as really rough periods. Mack Friedman gives us a coming of age and a coming out story that is just a wonderful read. There are times you are rocking in laughter and there are times that you are bleary with tears as you read this short novel of 147 pages.
We have had so many coming out stories that I approached this book with reluctance. I thought to myself, "Ho hum, another one". But I was so wrong and by the time I reached the third page I was so rapt that even a new episode of "Desperate Housewives" would not have caused me to put it down.
Ivan, a young Jewish boy from Milwaukee, is our main character and his journey through life is a journey of self discovery. As he travels, and travel he does--Wisconsin, Alaska, Philadelphia, Mexico and stops in between--he learns more about himself at each place. And as he learns he tells us about his learning process. He spends time as a hustler, a factory worker, a student and an artist.
We meet Ivan as he succumbs to the games of early childhood (you know those games!) and then watch him take off and speed through adolescence, saunter through young adulthood and swagger into a period as a hustler. Of course his self sacrifice to lust is perhaps the most interesting part of the book if a favorite part must be chosen. The final picture we get of Ivan is of a complete individual, "a full fledged sexual identity" and a representative of what the world of desire can cause a person to become. In fact, desire seems to permeate every page of the book. Likewise the book arouses the sensory perceptions as presented by Friedman in a beautiful and precise writing style.
The significance of the title of the book--the reference to fire--can be felt on every page, And I do not mean "flaming", I mean hot, hot descriptions of a kid not only coming of age but coming to terms with the world around him. This is a an honest book that is straightforward and bold as well as quite an accomplishment for a fist novel. What impresses me the most about it is that it is humble, it is human, it is honest, and it is sublime.
Some of you may think that I never give a book a bad review. To some degree that is true. If I don't like a book, I prefer not to review because if I do someone may buy it. I like to play it safe by reviewing books that I feel contribute something to our daily lives as gay people, Setting the Lawn on Fire not only does this but it also makes me want to ask when is Friedman's next book coming. Reading this book was kind of like having the salad before the rest of the meal. It made me hungry for more.
The Pay Off.......2006-12-07
Mack Friedman's novel is nearly an unqualified triumph, told from beginning to end in the sort of poetic language that reaches to amazing heights and plumbs the lower depths in the bargain. Shadows of great civilizations hang in the balance. It has a range and geographic sweep that puts other contemporary novels to shame, for our young hero Ivan, born to an unfortunate family in Wisconsin, travels the length and breadth of North America looking for the one thing he could never get from his traditional middle-class education, a sense of belonging. I was surprised and thrilled when Ivan decided to go to Alaska and work with his hands as a teen. As an American boy growing up in France, I devoured novels and comics set in Alaska, and Friedman seems to me to strike exactly the right balance for writing directly about space and time--the compressed and extended seasons of the north, the foreshortened days, the glorious months of summer. At conjuring up place, there's no one like him, and his Mexican and Pennsylvanian fearscapes are just as vivid. Where did he learn the patois of so many different kinds of people? You'll pick up the book and the dialogue alone will capture you.
Yet Ivan's story, his ceaseless desire for connection, has its own emotional underpinnings that merge with the sexual. To quell his feelings of self-loathing, and due to extreme horniness, he becomes a hustler, first as a call boy, then in absurd concatenation he cleans your house or apartment wearing only a jockstrap. When he first goes on a call, to a client who's into "spontaneous incest," he's directed to go down on his "cousin" and we find out at that moment that never has he--well I can't give away any more spoilers, Friedman will track me down and break my bones, but needless to say it's a dramatic surprise twist that to me had the punch of say, the end of THE SIXTH SENSE. The lush life of Friedman's prose nearly conceals his knack for the pure storytelling power we all crave at heart. He knows how to spin us out and he knows how to reel us in. Ivan's peregrinations occur under the shadow of Jeffrey Dahmer, another confused Wisconsin boy with a score to settle against society, and Friedman cannily plays off Ivan's all American appeal against Dahmer's sociopathology, and the payoff is the way they seem gradually to bleed into each other, so that the artificial borders of so called "psychology" dissolve in a blur of sensation.
The only thing that I didn't care for was the baroque treatment of Ivan's mom and dad, who are dispatched with the slick efficiency of a Lemony Snicket novel. Mom comes down with a withering virus that makes her last days resemble Margaret Hamilton melting under water, while Dad is almost absurdly "absent," as though to stress the emotional neediness of the young would be hustler. What happens to Mom and Dad shouldn't happen to a dog and of course, their fates impart to the material of SETTING THE LAWN ON FIRE a very 70s, Gothic feeling, like a couple of characters from a gay version of CHRISTINA'S WORLD. Maybe this was an autobiographical fillip and something like this actually occurred in Friedman's own family but still, that's no reason to gild the lily of one's novel with it. It's a book with treasure enough, its surfaces and its sinkholes all perfectly designed, pretty as goldfish, sad as the sun.
GENIUS.......2006-10-08
I don't write reviews, and am rather embarrassed to be doing so. But the others here were crazy. Just this: this is among the best gay novels of the last 20 years. All you need to know: Beautiful, vital, new. I'm a writer and editor, and Mack has a very brilliant piece too in a book I am editing. I've never met him, though, and am incorruptable anyhow.
Missing this book is your loss.
"Look at me. Take as much as you can" .......2006-08-29
Ivan, the main protagonist in Mack Friedman's first novel, isn't your usual confused and diffident gay teenager. Aching to be cut loose from his middle-class and somewhat conservative Jewish roots, Ivan begins to realize who and what he is at a very early age. Ivan is of course devastated when his archaeologist mother suddenly dies. When his father leaves to pursue his scientific research overseas, Ivan is largely left to his own devices.
It is 1985 and Ivan's friendship with Jeremy shapes much of his adolescence and his bourgeoning attraction towards men. He even admits that he didn't know what he was becoming, "it was because I didn't think I was. I had a sense of it but my point of view was limited: it was skin-deep and the boys always had clothes on."
An experience with his gymnastics teacher alters forever his prudish and hesitant views on sex, but it is the erotic images of boys in medical textbooks, that awakens Ivan to the first enthralls of self-pleasure, and he gradually becomes obsessed with these distilled images. Their influence over Ivan is undeniably powerful, his fascination with these boys largely affecting his ability to relate to men later in his journey.
In his early twenties, Ivan travels to the island of Ketchikan, off the west coast of British Columbia to work as a day laborer in a fish factory. Here he meets a bunch of other like-minded young, sexually frustrated, drifter guys. Although he keeps his sexual orientation to himself, he soon develops a crush on a boy called Sean and begins to obsess over "his dark nippled and his torn boxers."
In Sean, Ivan spies a kindred spirit, "our dead mothers, and our hug at the ferry," but Ivan is unable to form any real connection with Sean - perhaps because he's just too obsessed with the dream of finding the ideal man. Upon returning home, he tries to reconnect with his mother's memory through her scrap books and her possessions, but instead gets himself involved a number of compromising sexual situations, playing out his fantasies, as he searches for this strange and enigmatic boy of his youth who has slipped away.
Perhaps the real lessons are to be learned in Philadelphia where Ivan becomes a hustler with an escort agency and ends up tricking with the City's mayor. These erotic encounters are no longer sexually rewarding for Ivan, in reality, they mask a reluctance and hesitancy. As though Ivan is desperately trying to retrieve his boyish innocence: "any boy will really do, as long as he resembles how I used to look and how I used to feel."
Setting the Lawn on Fire is indeed a provocative and challenging study of the cyclical nature of desire and the sexual yearning of youth. Ivan journeys through a world of frantic sex from adolescence to early adulthood, the unusual sense of urgency always present. The confusion, the terror, and above all, the overwhelming aspirations of Ivan's are very much reflective of the gay everyman as he forges a path through the surreptitious conduits of adolescence, where fear of sex is often bred in isolation.
At times the novel can be hard to read; it often comes across as lacking continuity and overly metaphorical, but the prose is always spectacular as Friedman draws us into his stunning images. For Ivan, his journey ends in Mexico, where he remembers the time he spent with his beloved mother and where "moments lay piled on top of each other like cards, as soon as you look twice the deck's already reshuffled."
This young man is forced to cover the breadth of emotions - loneliness, despair, acceptance, passion and possibly even redemption. At the end of the novel, Ivan hasn't found any easy answers to the quandary of unchecked desire, but at least he has tried to make sense of his tumultuous past, whilst also facing the possibility an uncertain future. Mike Leonard August 06.
One Boy's Journey to Adulthood.......2006-06-29
The series of poetic, sexually-charged vignettes which make up this book create a very different picture of a young gay man from the typical coming out novel. However, the sense of extreme isolation remains, especially after the narrator Ivan is virtually abandoned by his parents. His already itinerant mother dies from a virus and his father leaves the country to pursue his scientific research. But Ivan chooses to isolate himself further by travelling to work in an Alaskan fish factory where he falls in love with a young man he shares a tent with. Ivan has a propensity for rejecting any prospects for a real connection in favour of pursuing the dream of the unattainable. Later, after Ivan moves back home, a young man propositions him in the locker room. But he leaves him in favour of trying to feel up a young Romanian basketball player he's cornered in a parking garage. There's a sense of danger here for the boy's safety as Ivan plays out his sexual fantasy, just as later on when he begins working as an escort we fear for Ivan's safety. The multifarious erotic encounters Ivan pursues turn out not to be for sexual fulfilment, but a desperate reclaiming of his boyhood self: "any boy will really do, as long as he resembles how I used to look, reminds me how I used to feel. I lost touch. You see. I shake myself away." Although Ivan is rapidly reaching the age of adulthood, there is a sense that his childhood has been lost or stolen. His pursuit to reclaim it is oftentimes disturbing like his obsession with medical textbook photographs of naked boys or the series killer who takes the body parts of his gay victims that lurks in the background of this story.
While Friedman's beautifully written chronicle of this unique character's early life can at times become disjointed and confused, he has a stunning turn of phrase that oftentimes yields startling insights. After a hurried session with a john in his attic, Friedman describes how Ivan psychologically deals with the horror of the encounter in a very haunting way: "I replay the scene over and over until I sense him as vague spirit, bearing just the remnants of its form." This is a powerful insight into the way people can continuously conjure up events beyond their control in their own minds as a way of emotionally owning them. This provocative book is insightful, wryly funny, daring and a challenge that is really worth undertaking.
Book Description
The Williams sisters have captured the attention of the tennis crowd like no one has in recent years. Taken alone, each is a force to be reckoned with on the court. Each has the skills, the determination, and the strength to make it to the very top of her sport. Yet through all the competition-even times when they face each other on opposite sides of the net-they remain true to each other.Serena has just won the Wimbledon 2002 singles title by defeating her sister and is currently ranked #1 in the world.Playing as partners, Venus and Serena won the Wimbledon 2002 doubles championship as well.
Amazon.com
Full of solid, practical advice and plenty of how-to pictures, Lawns and Groundcovers is an ideal title for those looking to maximize their success growing this astonishing variety of plants. Focusing on appropriate uses for different varieties, and exploring all kinds of options for dealing with a number of climates and growing conditions, you'll find direction for growing healthy plants and creating your own unique haven.
Designed to be a complete do-it-yourself guide, don't let the small format of this book fool you--it's absolutely jam-packed with ideas for all styles of gardens, and as always, publisher Dorling Kindersley manages to take fairly complicated projects and reduce them to a manageable size that even the gardening novice can handle. Practical considerations are dealt with firmly--no skipping such detail work as proper seed sowing or routine mulchings. The listings by color, size, use, and scent are very specific, and new gardeners will find all kinds of useful tips.
Inspirational ideas are plentiful--the garden photographs are lush and detailed and provide all kind of unusual notions for creating a truly unique gardening space. Whether you're looking to design a bed of cushy moss for a low-maintenance play area or naturalizing bulbs for a delightful casual look, you'll find options for all your projects involving these inexpensive and delightfully textured plants. --Jill Lightner
Book Description
Introducing a new series of practical guides on important gardening topics. A new generation of gardening reference titles, the AHS Practical Guides present the practical know-how of the American Horticultural Society in compact, attractive guides that address specific gardening topics. From popular plants and plant groups to garden design and planning solutions, these books answer every gardener's needs. With new photography, fresh ideas, straightforward text, and the finest horticultural information, the AHS Practical Guides inspire confidence and ensure success. Practical information in a compact format, with more than 250 color photos in each guide Includes clearly explained projects for the less experienced or busy gardener.
Customer Reviews:
AHS Practical Guide: Lawns & Groundcovers.......2000-05-04
Book lovers will want to buy this book simply because it is such a beautiful little book. It's nicely laid out at the perfect size for a little book, printed on slick paper and has dozens and dozens of top quality photographs.
I am not a lawn or gardening expert, but this little book seems to me to be chock full of good information. The section on ground covers other than grass, such as bulbs, perenials, and bushes is particularly good for such a short book. In addition, there are scores of tips and techniques for everthing from filling in low spots in your lawn to raking and aerating to planting bulbs under your lawn and dividing and propagating bulbs and other plants.
There are deficiencies. In particular, there is no discussion of soil PH, and the coverage of grass species is poor. A page on each of these topics would improve the book a great deal. A simple chart of grass species and their characteristics would be a great help.
I would characterize this as an "idea" book. You will get a lot of useful information about how to care for your grounds, but you will need to supplement this book with another for really comprehensive coverage of lawn care. Try "Lawn Care for Dummies."
More important, you will get good ideas about how to make your lawn and gardens stand out. In this regard, the photographs alone are worth the price of the book.
Book Description
On any list of the world's most pressing problems, water scarcity and water quality inevitably rank high. These issues and their related concerns often emerge in the major topics of the day, including Walkerton, free trade and globalization debates and drought.
Despite all the pessimism surrounding the future of the world's drinking water, many predicaments can be remedied with simple conservation methods. Home-based water conservation starts with How to Get Your Lawn Off Grass, the only North America-wide guide on how to convert your yard from a water-sucking source of pollution runoff to a flourishing, productive showcase of natural vegetation. While 1.3 billion people on the planet don't have access to safe drinking water, 60% of ours goes into conventional turf-grass lawns and ornamental, exotic gardens.
Runoff from chemical treatment of lawns and gardens has seriously compromised groundwater supplies everywhere in the United States and Canada. We have put garden cosmetics ahead of our health.
How to Get Your Lawn Off Grass teaches how to conserve water and prevent the pollution of groundwater. It covers how to cut, roll up and compost turf-grass lawn (and water-sucking, ornamental "exotic" garden plants) and how to replace them with gorgeous native ground covers: flowers, shrubs, trees and grasses that will need no fertilizers, no chemical controls for pests, no mowing and, after the first year, no watering. This is a vital publication for all North Americans who are concerned about water scarcity and water quality.
Customer Reviews:
promising title.......2002-12-24
Upon seeing the title of this book, I automatically picked it up and bought it. Being a chemical free gardener in the midst of a drought, I ran home elated at my good fortune in finding the very book I was hoping for. I have to say that my heart sank when I realized this was not a book exclusively about lawns(that space in the landscape used for family play,visual respite and contrast, and in design, for "negative space"), and how to manage them through use of different grasses and ground covers, and xeriscaping etc. This book has some good information in it and I would recommend it to the homeowner wanting some good tips for their garden. I myself learned a new thing or maybe two. It is in no way the comprehensive treatise on the subject its enticing title suggests. I would recommend any of the Rodale books out there first, but feel that there can never be too many books dedicated to the promotion of Gardening in an environmentally responsible fashion, And this a fine addition to someone building their collection . Finally it has to be said that the gardens featured in this book are not beautifully designed master pieces, a pity really.
Book Description
George Plimpton needed no encouragement. If there was a sport to play, a party to throw, a celebrity to amaze, a fireworks display to ignite, Plimpton was front and center hurling the pitch, popping the corks, lighting the fuse. And then, of course, writing about it with incomparable zest and style. His books made him a legend. The Paris Review, the magazine he founded and edited, won him a throne in literary heaven. Somehow, in the midst of his self-generated cyclones, Plimpton managed to toss off dazzling essays, profiles, and New Yorker “Talk of the Town” pieces. This delightful volume collects the very best of Plimpton’s inspired brief “excursions.”
Whether he was escorting Hunter Thompson to the Fear and Loathing movie premiere in New York or tracking down the California man who launched himself into the upper atmosphere with nothing but a lawn chair and a bunch of weather balloons, Plimpton had a rare knack for finding stories where no one else thought to look. Who but Plimpton would turn up in Las Vegas, notebook in hand, for the annual porn movie awards gala?
Among the many gems collected here are accounts of helping Jackie Kennedy plan an unforgettable children’s birthday party, the time he improvised his way through amateur night at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, and how he managed to get himself kicked out of Exeter just weeks before graduation.
The grand master of what he called “participatory journalism,” George Plimpton followed his bent and his genius down the most unbelievable rabbit holes–but he always came up smiling. This exemplary, utterly captivating volume is a fitting tribute to one of the great literary lives of our time.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
First Story.......2007-07-11
Except for the first story, which is what the title story, it was not that great of a collection. Some amusing parts and Plimpton is likable but ok at best.
Somewhere In Time........2005-04-12
This is a collection of some of his essays and articles as compiled after his death last September by his wife, Sarah Dudley. The majority of them are from the 'New Yorker' although two appeared in 'Harper's Magazine,' two in 'Esquire,' two were in 'Men's Journal' (one extremely long, other extremely short), also 'New York Post' and 'Playboy.'
"The Cellular Age" (1996) has just now reached Knoxville. The mental people out on the streets with their imaginary enemies have become vocal here. On Gay Street, during the lunch hour when the outdoor eating areas were full, one man walking up the sidewalk toward them kept yelling threats at no one in particular. Those of us on the sidewalk across the street from him looked to see who he was spewing his vendom toward, but there was no visible source. Just yesterday, a homeless woman sat in a bus shelter behind me as I was waiting for the Broadway bus to town; she started yelling, "Ronnie, kill them" over and over. I looked to see if she had a phone or a gun. Thank goodness, the bus arrived and she stayed in the shelter, lost in a world of her own.
George, it seems, sought out the oddballs, as does one of the columnists at a local tabloid. They seek these people out to interview as if they are normal and the readers are abnormal. The title of this book is one of his 'New Yorker' articles about a prank which a Vietnam vet survived, only to later commit suicide in delusion that he was in a movie. He romantizes the whole incident, but PTSS caused a lot of veterans of that war to want to die. He made his literary success on these strange people and unusual happenings. Some of these pieces were merely personal observations. He led an interesting life.
We'll miss you, George.......2005-01-26
I ordered this book after reading an excerpt of the title piece in the New York Times. Like most of us, I was aware of Larry Walters's epic flying lawn chair adventure, and I was happy to hear the full details of the story. Plimpton did a terrific job of painting a sympathetic and poignant picture of Walters. Indeed, throughout the book Plimpton displays a wonderfully breezy, droll, self-effacing writing style, and I enjoyed this book thoroughly.
The title selection is the best in this book, but other highlights include "Inside the playpen of the damned" (a look inside the world of actors in pornographic movies); Plimpton's autobiographical sketch of how he flunked out of Exeter; and "The man who was eaten alive" (a description of Alan Root, a documentary film maker who has had more than his fair share of adventures filming wildlife in Africa).
The only criticism I have of this book is that--like Plimpton's life itself--it is too short. I get the impression that it had originally been intended to be longer, but Plimpton's untimely death no doubt threw a monkey wrench in those plans. As it stands, the book contains only 184 double-spaced pages with large margins, and several of the 18 selections included are only a couple of pages long. They're all highly entertaining, but when I buy a book with a $24.95 cover price, I prefer a little more heft.
In sum, this book is a delightful way to spend an hour or so. Plimpton is obviously a remarkable man and gifted writer who led an extremely interesting life. The world will miss him.
Books:
- Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community
- Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
- Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
- Garden Mosaics: 25 Step-By-Step Projects for Your Outdoor Room
- Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop: The Basics of ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo Updated for ArcGIS 9 (Getting to Know series)
- Great Gardens of the World: In Search of Paradise
- His Little Princess: Treasured Letters from Your King (His Princess)
- His Princess: Love Letters from Your King (His Princess)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- Hortus Eystettensis
Books Index
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