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Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
The first edition of Gaia's Garden, sparked the imagination of America's home gardeners, introducing permaculture's central Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.
Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening--which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants--can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it's fun and easy to create a "backyard ecosystem" by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, and maintaining soil fertility and structure Catching and conserving water in the landscapeProviding habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animalsGrowing an edible "forest" that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foodsThis revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it's established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that's needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.
Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening--which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants--can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it's fun and easy to create a "backyard ecosystem" by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, and maintaining soil fertility and structure Catching and conserving water in the landscapeProviding habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animalsGrowing an edible "forest" that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foodsThis revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it's established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that's needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.
640 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2001
960 people are currently reading
9225 people want to read
About the author
Toby Hemenway
6 books75 followersToby Hemenway was an American author and educator who has written extensively on permaculture and ecological issues. He was an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University and a field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA).
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July 25, 2012
I've found now a few different "comprehensive teach yourself permaculture" books, each tailored to a different audience. Food Not Lawns for the punks and the community organizers, The Urban Homestead for the busy, The Transition Companion for the big picture people and Toolbox for Sustainable Living for the tinkerers. Gaia's Garden stands above these books for its general appeal, a guidebook in clear, flowing language for understanding and working with the ecology of cultivated environments.
Toby Hemenway distilled a lot of overwhelming disciplines, including a lot of science, into a neat, easy to follow course here. Hemenway uses ecology, botany, biology, and chemistry to explain how to reason garden design yourself. Permaculture is about understanding the interactions of systems in nature and then implementing soil, water, and perennial plant designs that replicate natural ecological communities, so that that your design basically allows the feedback loops and natural processes inherent in your garden to do the rough gardening work of watering, fertilizing, planting, and surviving weather shocks. With a well-designed and carefully crafted permaculture garden, the garden should require few or no outside inputs, allowing for lazy gardeners and lush, bounteous harvests (though the gardener is still responsible for picking, so don't get too lazy).
The best part of this book is the way Hemenway teaches the critical thinking skills to apply permaculture principles in many different settings. Many "homesteading" books fail because they are based in one climate or assume a certain size yard. This book instead looks at the basic structures found in all ecological communities, and then examines different ways they manifest in different settings (in nature and in the garden/farm). Then he teases out the differences and asks what are the different plants reacting to and why? So the reader gains general tools and also the skill to apply them, with the added bonus that most examples were chosen for their relevance to North American climate and soil, so US-based readers can try them out first before striking out on their own designs.
What really makes this book pop are the last few chapters on guilds and food forests. Finally an approachable guide to directly replicating natural plant communities! Hemenway examines how to figure out what plant communities grow in the habitat where you live, and how to substitute related species with human uses for the usual, natural species found in that ecosystem. I love this because it is awesome. I also love this because it encourages the gardener to go out and understand local forests and maybe even learn to forage while also learning to cultivate the same ecological structures that local wildlife need for survival (wildlife here including bugs and birds), turning the home gardener from someone kind of reducing the overall burden on agricultural land (freeing some up for wildlife habitat, maybe) to someone actually creating a native habitat oasis where they get their food. Ah! I love it. Love it!
I already made my mom read this book, and I really want everyone else in the world to read it too. I'm already starting a slow, skimming re-read to guide my garden design for next year. This year I read half of this (plus about a dozen other homesteading garden books) by March, and then in the spring we built a sheet-mulched raised bed and a pretty epic potted garden, with the main goal of creating soil. Not much thought went into plant choice or placement. Next year, the perennial planting will begin, with Hemenway as the main guide.
Toby Hemenway distilled a lot of overwhelming disciplines, including a lot of science, into a neat, easy to follow course here. Hemenway uses ecology, botany, biology, and chemistry to explain how to reason garden design yourself. Permaculture is about understanding the interactions of systems in nature and then implementing soil, water, and perennial plant designs that replicate natural ecological communities, so that that your design basically allows the feedback loops and natural processes inherent in your garden to do the rough gardening work of watering, fertilizing, planting, and surviving weather shocks. With a well-designed and carefully crafted permaculture garden, the garden should require few or no outside inputs, allowing for lazy gardeners and lush, bounteous harvests (though the gardener is still responsible for picking, so don't get too lazy).
The best part of this book is the way Hemenway teaches the critical thinking skills to apply permaculture principles in many different settings. Many "homesteading" books fail because they are based in one climate or assume a certain size yard. This book instead looks at the basic structures found in all ecological communities, and then examines different ways they manifest in different settings (in nature and in the garden/farm). Then he teases out the differences and asks what are the different plants reacting to and why? So the reader gains general tools and also the skill to apply them, with the added bonus that most examples were chosen for their relevance to North American climate and soil, so US-based readers can try them out first before striking out on their own designs.
What really makes this book pop are the last few chapters on guilds and food forests. Finally an approachable guide to directly replicating natural plant communities! Hemenway examines how to figure out what plant communities grow in the habitat where you live, and how to substitute related species with human uses for the usual, natural species found in that ecosystem. I love this because it is awesome. I also love this because it encourages the gardener to go out and understand local forests and maybe even learn to forage while also learning to cultivate the same ecological structures that local wildlife need for survival (wildlife here including bugs and birds), turning the home gardener from someone kind of reducing the overall burden on agricultural land (freeing some up for wildlife habitat, maybe) to someone actually creating a native habitat oasis where they get their food. Ah! I love it. Love it!
I already made my mom read this book, and I really want everyone else in the world to read it too. I'm already starting a slow, skimming re-read to guide my garden design for next year. This year I read half of this (plus about a dozen other homesteading garden books) by March, and then in the spring we built a sheet-mulched raised bed and a pretty epic potted garden, with the main goal of creating soil. Not much thought went into plant choice or placement. Next year, the perennial planting will begin, with Hemenway as the main guide.
November 28, 2019
2.5
It's hard for me to critique this book without also critiquing permaculture as a movement. So let's focus on my problems with the whole movement, in re gardening, which is this book's focus. I'll probably be ranting before I'm done.
1. There is nothing original in the ideas of permaculture gardening. It's cobbled together from previous ideas and given a shiny new name.
2. It's internally inconsistent. "Work with nature. Be minimal in your designs." But also, step 1, do major earthworks, step 2, install a humongous water cistern and a bunch of plastic watering tubes. There's plenty of that disconnect in this book.
3. Permaculture is cultlike in general and in many details and trends. Like…comfrey, comfrey, comfrey. I'm sick of hearing about it. You must mail-order some special weed roots, and they're shipped to you via diesel truck, along with all the other plants that are "in" right now, while you ignore the carbon cost of that truck trip. You had perfectly nice dock and chicory in your yard, but hey, comfrey is IN. And except with comfrey, the special plants seems to shift from year to year, which makes sense only for the sellers profiting from selling them, which leads me to…
4. $1000 US and upwards to get a "permaculture design certificate." Eff me sideways, what a racket. This book, which you can probably get from your library for free, is equivalent to one, so bypass the classes and read this instead. Which leads me to…
4b. The whole movement is really bourgeois, and this book is full of that 'tude. First you buy your four acres in a nice place, and then you hire your permaculture designer for $20,000, and then you do your major earthworks, and then you put in your solar system and special appliances, and then you mail-order $10,000 worth of exotic plants. Not needed. The way I do no-till organic gardening is to beg tree services for free wood chips, take home free cardboard when I shop, rake other people's leaves for them, and buy 25-cent seeds at my local Dollar Tree (yes, they're open pollinated varieties just like those $4 seeds online).
5. Some of it doesn't make a lick of sense. "Food forests" is not a way to grow tomatoes. If I'm going to build no0till garden areas, which includes moving a lot of tons of crap around with my aging bod for two or three years, and nurture my seed starts indoors, and harden them off over two careful weeks, and trellis them and prune them and possibly have to spray them with baking soda during bad blight years, I'm doing it to eat some damned tomatoes at the end of that work. (Don't get me started on "no work" gardening. Tomatoes are work. They just are. Many other food plants can take care of themselves after you stick the seed in soil, but tomatoes are needy.) Most vegetables don't produce well in shade, so a food forest for veg is nonsensical. ("Food forests" for fruit are really just orchards with some understory, so again, it's making up a fancy word for something people have been doing for generations.)
6. It's sexist. It's sexist in its culture from what I've seen and read, and it's sexist that a lot of these ideas come from aboriginal women and from Westernized women like Ruth Stout and Esther Deans and that English woman of 100 years ago who I admit I'm forgetting the name of today. Seldom are those women referenced (One line in this book mentions Stout.) None of those women got rich off the core ideas. Nope. A bunch of men came along and capitalized on the ideas. You might counterargue, "Hey, that's just capitalism doing its thing. They stepped up to grab the available money and the women didn't." But these people allegedly hate capitalism, except, it seems, when they are charging for courses and consultations and raking in adsense money and "gofundme"ing their new greenhouses.
7. Permaculture attracts wackos. Seriously, go to Youtube and ask for this months' permaculture videos and you will see bug-eyed people who'll believe anything. (Like they'll believe they have to replace their perfectly fine local weeds with comfrey because it's a Very Special Weed.) They can't stop with claiming "homegrown vegetables taste better and, picked at their ripeness, are probably more nutritious than those at your supermarket." They have to promise increased spiritual awareness from their produce. (Dudes, I grew some pretty good tomatoes this year, but they didn't make me see gods. Maybe other people are eating them after they've fermented? Or can tomatoes get ergot?) They talk about unscientific crap like focusing our mental energy to create some physical change in the world or about comets out at the orbit of Jupiter changing your gardening experience in Witchita or about solar minimums and the End Times, and oh my god, it's Wackdoodle Central! Not, not every one of them is so bad. (I would refer you, for instance, to the sensible Nova Scotian who posts there as Maritime Gardener or to One Yard Revolution's moribund channel.) But a majority of them are more than a little crazy. How can I believe in anything these people say when 75% of them have clearly let their avocado slip off their toast? In the defense of this author, though, he isn't like this often or strongly in this book, and he even says that science shows that orally perpetuated myths about "companion planting" vegetables are nonsense. So a tiny "yay" for him for paying attention to science in that case.
8. You can't claim to be no-carbon-impact and off the grid if you're on the internet. The internet is the griddiest grid that ever gridded.
But anyway, enough bitching about the movement and onto this book in particular. I did get a list of plants beyond comfrey that have deep taproots that I can use to chop and drop for mulch and that I can start from plants or seed I can get cheaply or already grow and can propagate to that end. The book needed more illustrations/plans of gardens to make his points, in my opinion. He relied too much on his own two properties for examples.
If you have drunk the permaculture kool-aid with a total lack of critical thinking, this is a four-star book, I'm sure. If you're a skeptic like I am, if you notice internal inconsistencies between permaculture's stated principles and practices, it's maybe 2.5 stars. Negative 1.5 stars of that is really a critique of permaculture as a movement, not of this author in particular. He's parroting the party line. It's just that I see a bunch of stuff wrong with the party line.
It's hard for me to critique this book without also critiquing permaculture as a movement. So let's focus on my problems with the whole movement, in re gardening, which is this book's focus. I'll probably be ranting before I'm done.
1. There is nothing original in the ideas of permaculture gardening. It's cobbled together from previous ideas and given a shiny new name.
2. It's internally inconsistent. "Work with nature. Be minimal in your designs." But also, step 1, do major earthworks, step 2, install a humongous water cistern and a bunch of plastic watering tubes. There's plenty of that disconnect in this book.
3. Permaculture is cultlike in general and in many details and trends. Like…comfrey, comfrey, comfrey. I'm sick of hearing about it. You must mail-order some special weed roots, and they're shipped to you via diesel truck, along with all the other plants that are "in" right now, while you ignore the carbon cost of that truck trip. You had perfectly nice dock and chicory in your yard, but hey, comfrey is IN. And except with comfrey, the special plants seems to shift from year to year, which makes sense only for the sellers profiting from selling them, which leads me to…
4. $1000 US and upwards to get a "permaculture design certificate." Eff me sideways, what a racket. This book, which you can probably get from your library for free, is equivalent to one, so bypass the classes and read this instead. Which leads me to…
4b. The whole movement is really bourgeois, and this book is full of that 'tude. First you buy your four acres in a nice place, and then you hire your permaculture designer for $20,000, and then you do your major earthworks, and then you put in your solar system and special appliances, and then you mail-order $10,000 worth of exotic plants. Not needed. The way I do no-till organic gardening is to beg tree services for free wood chips, take home free cardboard when I shop, rake other people's leaves for them, and buy 25-cent seeds at my local Dollar Tree (yes, they're open pollinated varieties just like those $4 seeds online).
5. Some of it doesn't make a lick of sense. "Food forests" is not a way to grow tomatoes. If I'm going to build no0till garden areas, which includes moving a lot of tons of crap around with my aging bod for two or three years, and nurture my seed starts indoors, and harden them off over two careful weeks, and trellis them and prune them and possibly have to spray them with baking soda during bad blight years, I'm doing it to eat some damned tomatoes at the end of that work. (Don't get me started on "no work" gardening. Tomatoes are work. They just are. Many other food plants can take care of themselves after you stick the seed in soil, but tomatoes are needy.) Most vegetables don't produce well in shade, so a food forest for veg is nonsensical. ("Food forests" for fruit are really just orchards with some understory, so again, it's making up a fancy word for something people have been doing for generations.)
6. It's sexist. It's sexist in its culture from what I've seen and read, and it's sexist that a lot of these ideas come from aboriginal women and from Westernized women like Ruth Stout and Esther Deans and that English woman of 100 years ago who I admit I'm forgetting the name of today. Seldom are those women referenced (One line in this book mentions Stout.) None of those women got rich off the core ideas. Nope. A bunch of men came along and capitalized on the ideas. You might counterargue, "Hey, that's just capitalism doing its thing. They stepped up to grab the available money and the women didn't." But these people allegedly hate capitalism, except, it seems, when they are charging for courses and consultations and raking in adsense money and "gofundme"ing their new greenhouses.
7. Permaculture attracts wackos. Seriously, go to Youtube and ask for this months' permaculture videos and you will see bug-eyed people who'll believe anything. (Like they'll believe they have to replace their perfectly fine local weeds with comfrey because it's a Very Special Weed.) They can't stop with claiming "homegrown vegetables taste better and, picked at their ripeness, are probably more nutritious than those at your supermarket." They have to promise increased spiritual awareness from their produce. (Dudes, I grew some pretty good tomatoes this year, but they didn't make me see gods. Maybe other people are eating them after they've fermented? Or can tomatoes get ergot?) They talk about unscientific crap like focusing our mental energy to create some physical change in the world or about comets out at the orbit of Jupiter changing your gardening experience in Witchita or about solar minimums and the End Times, and oh my god, it's Wackdoodle Central! Not, not every one of them is so bad. (I would refer you, for instance, to the sensible Nova Scotian who posts there as Maritime Gardener or to One Yard Revolution's moribund channel.) But a majority of them are more than a little crazy. How can I believe in anything these people say when 75% of them have clearly let their avocado slip off their toast? In the defense of this author, though, he isn't like this often or strongly in this book, and he even says that science shows that orally perpetuated myths about "companion planting" vegetables are nonsense. So a tiny "yay" for him for paying attention to science in that case.
8. You can't claim to be no-carbon-impact and off the grid if you're on the internet. The internet is the griddiest grid that ever gridded.
But anyway, enough bitching about the movement and onto this book in particular. I did get a list of plants beyond comfrey that have deep taproots that I can use to chop and drop for mulch and that I can start from plants or seed I can get cheaply or already grow and can propagate to that end. The book needed more illustrations/plans of gardens to make his points, in my opinion. He relied too much on his own two properties for examples.
If you have drunk the permaculture kool-aid with a total lack of critical thinking, this is a four-star book, I'm sure. If you're a skeptic like I am, if you notice internal inconsistencies between permaculture's stated principles and practices, it's maybe 2.5 stars. Negative 1.5 stars of that is really a critique of permaculture as a movement, not of this author in particular. He's parroting the party line. It's just that I see a bunch of stuff wrong with the party line.
July 3, 2014
This book is quite the game changer if you, like me, had a very traditional understanding of gardening and what a garden should look like. As a designer, it completely changed my way of seeing landscaping and what a landscape should look like and work like. This book teaches the basics of permaculture in a practical, non preachy way. It helps you design a forest garden, gives you the bases to work with large scale gardens and small scale gardens -though the actual small scale gardens could use more information, I'm sure there's other books on small spaces. What's important is that once you understand the principles -the major one can be summed up in: nature is doing fine without you, maybe you should let her do her thing- the garden looks like a completely different canvas. It's not 'how can it look good?' but 'what is missing in this ecosystem?'. Why wasn't I thinking about gardens as ecosystems?
This is definitely part of what is missing in our designers, landscapers and architects education. Until we ask ourselves, what is nature doing and how can I emulate it, we're going to keep hitting the same walls, investing time, energy and resources in our gardens and houses and cities, and we're gonna keep trying to invent solutions for problems we created ourselves.
This is definitely part of what is missing in our designers, landscapers and architects education. Until we ask ourselves, what is nature doing and how can I emulate it, we're going to keep hitting the same walls, investing time, energy and resources in our gardens and houses and cities, and we're gonna keep trying to invent solutions for problems we created ourselves.
April 1, 2015
I wanted to like this book but it has some of the same problems that many permaculture books do, it focuses on exotic plants to create a permaculture garden. Permaculture to be ecologically-responsible needs to focus on knowing, using and growing the plants of a particular locale with some non-invasive exotics added. Planting non-native plants simply continues the destruction of an ecosystem. The native plants of North American with a few exceptions have been ignored as food and medicine. Native plants are eaten and used by indigenous people just fine. In all fairness this book was published (2001) before Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy changed how we think about native plants. I read this book back in 2001 when it was first published, even then I had a problem with the focus on non-native plants.
February 10, 2023
I wanted to like this book but it has some of the same problems that many permaculture books do, it focuses on exotic plants to create a permaculture garden. Permaculture to be ecologically-responsible needs to focus on knowing, using and growing the plants of a particular locale with some non-invasive exotics added. Planting non-native plants simply continues the destruction of an ecosystem. The native plants of North American with a few exceptions have been ignored as food and medicine. Native plants are eaten and used by indigenous people just fine.
March 26, 2008
Loved this book! Practical ways to implement permaculture--which is the most efficient way to garden. As I dream of my own fruit orchard, I want to lay it out as recommended in this book: with bird and insect attracting shrubs (to deter fruit tree predators without spraying) and nitrogen-fixing plants (to lesson the need for fertilizers) and mulching plants (to decrease the watering needs). I love the idea of planning out my landscape so it takes care of itself (as much as possible).
June 30, 2017
I never thought a permaculture book would make me laugh out loud. Toby explains complex ideas in layman's terms and often adds dorky humor. I want to be his best friend.
March 14, 2018
Absolutely loved it.
July 16, 2021
Świetny wstęp do ogrodnictwa permakulturowego i ekologicznego. Autor z entuzjazmem i humorem przekazuje fachową wiedzę, a także przybliża czytelnikom filozoficzne podstawy tego stylu prowadzenia ogrodu. Szczególnie przydatne i praktyczne są tabele roślin - zawierają akumulowane pierwiastki, stanowisko i funkcje. Nic tylko komponować swoje pierwsze gildie 😎💚
September 14, 2021
TL;DR I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in designing and creating a permaculture or ecological garden of their own. 4/5 stars.
Hemenway's book was my introduction to ecological garden design. The most important take away from the book: You don't have to wait. Hemenway shows readers how to start designing an ecological garden, basically anywhere. It's easy to get into the *ahem* weeds of garden design, but he navigates these deftly. There are many examples of successful permaculture in unexpected places. You don't have to start with perfect soil and conditions. Good conditions are created by introducing plants and starting virtuous and interacting web of organisms.
Gaia's Garden is a manual, in essence, and sometimes reads like one (hence four stars). Even still Hemenway offers humor and clarity on every page. He quips towards the end that "sensititive but ironic New Age types call pruning 'hortitorture.'" "Sensitive but ironic" is my new favorite descriptor -- I'd use it to describe people that oppose nuclear energy (which I'm always happy to discuss in good faith). I liked the introductory discussion of the ecological principles which offers a mental framework with applications beyond ecological gardening.
I definitely recommend this book as a jumping off point for ecological gardening.
Hemenway's book was my introduction to ecological garden design. The most important take away from the book: You don't have to wait. Hemenway shows readers how to start designing an ecological garden, basically anywhere. It's easy to get into the *ahem* weeds of garden design, but he navigates these deftly. There are many examples of successful permaculture in unexpected places. You don't have to start with perfect soil and conditions. Good conditions are created by introducing plants and starting virtuous and interacting web of organisms.
Gaia's Garden is a manual, in essence, and sometimes reads like one (hence four stars). Even still Hemenway offers humor and clarity on every page. He quips towards the end that "sensititive but ironic New Age types call pruning 'hortitorture.'" "Sensitive but ironic" is my new favorite descriptor -- I'd use it to describe people that oppose nuclear energy (which I'm always happy to discuss in good faith). I liked the introductory discussion of the ecological principles which offers a mental framework with applications beyond ecological gardening.
I definitely recommend this book as a jumping off point for ecological gardening.
June 16, 2024
This is an introductory book to Permaculture. Hemenway has an easy reading vibe that made me impatient. A fifty page summary would have suited me better. I suspect it remains the best place to start reading in the field, but more technical research and writing keeps catching my eye. I found myself wanting to skim through just to finish the book. Which I did. Finish, that is; not skim. Although maybe a little of that too.
July 19, 2008
This is a book that should be on every gardener's shelf regardless if you have one acre or one hundred. This book got me thinking of my own gardens as living, changing, interconnected environments and not some space I keep my plant collection. The ideals are something that any gardener, regardless of experience or gardening style can incorporate for a healthier and more active ecosystem.
December 16, 2007
My first permaculture book and still probably my favorite. Lots of practical information about designing gardens and landscapes, and good case studies, too. Hemenway is preparing a new edition that should be even better, but until then...
March 19, 2018
"Gaia's Garden" provides an excellent introduction to the concepts of ecological gardening. Toby Hemenway's writing style is very approachable, yet he still manages to convey a great deal of information throughout the pages of this book. Ideas such as ecological succession, food web interrelationships, appropriate resource utilization, efficiency, and interspecies compatibility are explored in great detail. The broad themes will be familiar to those who have studied sustainability, holistic land management, permaculture, and so forth, but here these subjects are presented with a decidedly grounded perspective that reflects the author's scientific background.
The garden exemplars and case studies which are reviewed at length by the author offer intriguing archetypes from which readers can extrapolate to their own climates and locations. Numerous colorful illustrations accompanying the text are attractive and instructive as well. Consequently, the main drawback to this book is the time required to read it, due not to its modest length (approximately 270 pages), but rather to the fact that the reader is constantly distracted - at least in this reviewer's experience - by daydreams inspired by the exciting opportunities described by Hemenway.
As an introductory text, "Gaia's Garden" is far from the final word concerning the subjects discussed within. However, further resources are suggested by frequent in-text references and by the extensive bibliography.
This book will be of interest to prospective readers whose interests include gardening, botany, ecology, sustainable living, permaculture, and resource management.
The garden exemplars and case studies which are reviewed at length by the author offer intriguing archetypes from which readers can extrapolate to their own climates and locations. Numerous colorful illustrations accompanying the text are attractive and instructive as well. Consequently, the main drawback to this book is the time required to read it, due not to its modest length (approximately 270 pages), but rather to the fact that the reader is constantly distracted - at least in this reviewer's experience - by daydreams inspired by the exciting opportunities described by Hemenway.
As an introductory text, "Gaia's Garden" is far from the final word concerning the subjects discussed within. However, further resources are suggested by frequent in-text references and by the extensive bibliography.
This book will be of interest to prospective readers whose interests include gardening, botany, ecology, sustainable living, permaculture, and resource management.
July 3, 2023
Took a while to get through. Honestly, it felt like a university level self guided course. The teacher, albeit absent, did an excellent job of presenting the material in an understandable way. I feel much more confident in the task at hand, knowing that if I put in the time and effort, Mother Nature has my back. In fact, she's cheering me on. All living beings benefit from even the smallest effort to convert from the lawn wastelands.
Highly recommend. The previous efforts at hunting and pecking information before buying this bible seem like wasted time in hindsight. Would have been better served to use that time, now that I have a better grasp .
Highly recommend. The previous efforts at hunting and pecking information before buying this bible seem like wasted time in hindsight. Would have been better served to use that time, now that I have a better grasp .
August 12, 2019
I didn't find the sections on "zones" all that helpful for conceptualizing an urban lot. There was also a great deal of emphasis put on edge concepts like sheet mulching and greywater recycling, which won't have applicability for many people.
That said, this book was excellent because it gave me many practical ideas for water management, garden design, and plant selection. One of the better gardening books I have read.
That said, this book was excellent because it gave me many practical ideas for water management, garden design, and plant selection. One of the better gardening books I have read.
July 2, 2022
Don’t be turned off by the title - there’s really no new age stuff in the entire book! Excellent overview of permaculture principles. I read the whole book 5 years ago and have used it as a reference many times since then. Decided to reread the whole thing this year. Hemenway does an excellent job of combining biology, botany, ecology, theory, and practice to create a perfect guide for those who want to learn to develop their own piece of land for abundant and permanent fertility!
May 2, 2021
An inspirational introduction to the practical implementation of permaculture design. Extremely dense with both knowledge and wisdom.
June 16, 2021
Wonderful book. I think that a sail from Shadeg Shade Sails would make any garden look artistic.
September 27, 2021
A simple yet thorough introduction to the topic of permaculture
June 18, 2022
I find myself picking up this book every now and then for some inspiration, but will most likely donate it to the local library. A great introductory book to growing in relationship with the land.
March 10, 2023
A great beginners guide to permaculture. If you have a yard I beg you to read this.
June 15, 2024
I will probably never grow a full scale permaculture garden or a food forest, but this book introduced so many good ideas and concepts that has transformed how I think about gardening.
June 8, 2018
Inspirational. I learned so much that I will be incorporating into my own garden.
February 17, 2021
Excellent. Inspiring. I've wondered frequently through the years of how yards and gardens can be used more efficiently-I was fortunate enough to stumble across this book with so many answers and easy ways to start. He gave so many ideas and examples, without making you feel like you needed to do it all.
May 4, 2022
Friendship ended with compost, sheet mulch is my best friend.
March 21, 2016
Toby Hemenway's book lives up to its reputation as one of the most accessible introductions to the permaculture design method and its applications to creating an ecological garden. He covers the gamut, from observation to designing, soil building to water harvesting, beneficial insects to plant selection, guilds, sectors, zones, and so on. Hemenway writes in a welcome conversational tone and this is no textbook, but "Gaia's Garden" still also includes some great reference material. My copy is soil-stained from consulting it in situ while trying some things out in a new garden bed. Reading the book in bits and pieces over the last year - in part because I was busy with building a community garden, among other things! - was a good way to go because it allowed more of the concepts to sink in, or to affirm things I had read and experienced elsewhere.
I highly recommend this to all gardeners looking to produce more of their own food while taking responsibility for giving back to the earth and its myriad creatures. I would also recommend this to fellow permies who want to deepen their understanding of permaculture methodology, since the creation of an ecological garden offers a concrete application of theories and principles that can sometimes seem abstract.
I highly recommend this to all gardeners looking to produce more of their own food while taking responsibility for giving back to the earth and its myriad creatures. I would also recommend this to fellow permies who want to deepen their understanding of permaculture methodology, since the creation of an ecological garden offers a concrete application of theories and principles that can sometimes seem abstract.
May 27, 2020
Lot of useful info in this but Hemenway really, really likes to drive home his point by repeating it 8 times in a single chapter. Then 3 times in the next one. Then 5 times in the next etc etc etc and oh my god I know soil building is important please stop explaining why every three pages.
This book could easily have been cut by 1/3 and still been as useful.
But it is useful! As an intro to permaculture it explained a lot of what I was wondering about and a lot of basic techniques and the theory behind them. It's really North-America based so the actual plants used and guilds formed are probably not that useful to anyone else, but the idea behind it is clearly explained (ad nauseum) and simple to understand. It's not dogmatic either, which was nice to see. A lot of texts on this kind of subject end up making me feel bad because I'm an actual human not a simulation, but Hemenway takes the attitude that doing the best you can is better than doing nothing at all. It's very accessible, if boring and repetitive.
I can't do any of this stuff on my balcony but I feel better prepared to make plans for the future now. There are a ton of references at the end that are, again, mostly NA-based, but still useful. I am sold on the concept of permaculture thanks to this book.
This book could easily have been cut by 1/3 and still been as useful.
But it is useful! As an intro to permaculture it explained a lot of what I was wondering about and a lot of basic techniques and the theory behind them. It's really North-America based so the actual plants used and guilds formed are probably not that useful to anyone else, but the idea behind it is clearly explained (ad nauseum) and simple to understand. It's not dogmatic either, which was nice to see. A lot of texts on this kind of subject end up making me feel bad because I'm an actual human not a simulation, but Hemenway takes the attitude that doing the best you can is better than doing nothing at all. It's very accessible, if boring and repetitive.
I can't do any of this stuff on my balcony but I feel better prepared to make plans for the future now. There are a ton of references at the end that are, again, mostly NA-based, but still useful. I am sold on the concept of permaculture thanks to this book.
May 27, 2017
I went into this book fully expecting the complete hippie experience with "medicinal" herb recommendations and whatnot. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised with science! Of course, there are some flowery descriptions and sentiments, but Hemenway uses facts about plants to describe how to create functioning ecosystems. There are A LOT of applicable facts in this book, useful for everything from small scale gardens to huge amounts of acreage. Of course, there are some things that aren't super possible for some people (like, I do not have the ability or particular urge to redirect my laundry water into my garden), but most of it is useful and amazing.
January 10, 2008
I've learned more about musical form from this book than I have in any music book. Aside from that, Gaia's Garden has inspired me to further readings on permaculture and its applications. I'm recommending it to my friend's family who's just bought a farm. How efficient and wondeful the farm will be once they've applied these principles. For those who know nothing of permaculture, but a little about gardening I suggest you beg, borrow, or steal this book.
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