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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
For Flores, "practicing ecological living is a deeply subversive act," and while most gardening books do not include warnings that COINTELPRO "can and will...rape you," it is only because most gardening books do not encourage "guerilla gardening" after describing the basics of garden planning and pruning. More advanced topics range from integrating barnyard birds into a garden to getting more mileage out of the home water cycle to the benefits of a balanced insect population. The illustrations are amusing as well as helpful, and though the index is not extensive, the book, overall, is a much better read than the average gardening book, both in terms of range and entertainment value.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
iRadical (rooted), subversive (underground), and seeded throughout with treasures that will sprout into savoury, beautiful flowers. Donit just buy this book: Read it. Don't just read this book: Do it. Grow a garden. And let the weeds grow; theyire good medicine.i Susun Weed, Wise Woman Herbal Series
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I LOVE this book!,
By
Ce commentaire est de: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community (Paperback)
This is a multi-purpose book: it will teach you how to plan your yard and garden based on permaculture principles, how to create a community within your neighbourhood, how to be an activist through plants, and so much more. It is highly inspiring and also practical. Some of the ideas might seem a little wacky at first, but you don't have to do it all at once. At the very least, you should come away understanding how pointless and wasteful a lawn is when you could be saving the soil, growing food and creating beauty.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
fluffy activism,
By Garden Diva (Vancouver, CAN) - See all my reviews
Ce commentaire est de: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community (Paperback)
Having recently converted my front lawn into a food garden, I was pretty excited to read this book but felt a bit let down by the lack of meat. I was expecting a little more to sink my teeth into, but there was mostly a lot of fluff.However, for someone new to the idea of growing your own food it is a great place to start, and she had some fantastic ideas for kids. (A "scratch and sniff garden"? Genius!) A good introduction to grass-roots food activism. Would be a great read for school teachers or parents, but I wouldn't recommend it for more experienced gardeners and activists.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews) 79 of 80 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Overly idealistic, but interesting for what it is,
By A. Ray - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community (Paperback)
There's a tendency among activists these days to see their focus as the solution to all the world's problems. For one author, feminism envelopes all issues; for another communism (or capitalism) does. For others, it's Christianity.As an avid, beginning gardener, I understand the appeal, but I feel like the connection between world peace and gardening wasn't adequately argued in the book. Having scrounged myself a piece of a neighbor's yard, I expected that this would be a good book to get me started on a practical bent. However, I found that the idealism often prevented extensive practical advice which is necessary for the beginner. Perhaps advanced gardeners can "make space for all plant species" and can't recommend one species above another, but there was limited - almost non-existent - acknowledgment that some species are easier to grow than others, and some are more useful in terms of food production, especially if space is extremely limited. For a first "food" garden, would I be better off growing potatoes? Tomatoes? Spinach? I found the transition from garden-related activism to community activism quite rocky. I wish the sections on seed-saving and connecting with neighbors were expanded. On a personal level, I found many of the asides (which I will paraphrase as "well, *of course* all right-minded people agree that ____________") were off-putting, as hard-core radical leftists are not the only ones who are interested in producing clean, local food and making communities. I was also troubled by the exhortations to get rid of appliances, go vegetarian, and dumpster scavenge to save the environment, while at the same time suggesting extensive driving (to farms, to dumpsters, around town, between bakeries). All that aside, Food Not Lawns is an interesting read. It's a bit like reading a brainstorming session, which politics and communication and personal stories and food info is interspersed. It is clear the author is passionate about her subject, and believes in the process. In a sense, it is a very second-wave book - before the post-post modern doubts and hyper self-awareness. It's refreshing, and combined with sources of practical horticultural information, would be a good read for any radical gardener. 56 of 61 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT TO GROW FOOD, NOT GRASS,
By Kerry Trueman "Kat" - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community (Paperback)
Food Not Lawns is a terrific and timely new paperback from activist and urban gardener H.C. Flores.Flores is a proponent of permaculture, a sustainable way of landscaping inspired by natural eco-systems. Her book presents a nine-step plan to transform the typical wasteland of turf into a productive, environmentally friendly "paradise garden" bursting with edible bounty. "The average American lawn," according to Flores, "could produce several hundred pounds of food a year." Food Not Lawns began as an offshoot of the grassroots group Food Not Bombs, a non-profit with chapters all over the country that provides free vegetarian meals to the hungry using donated ingredients that would otherwise end up in a dumpster. Flores' experience cooking and serving meals with Food Not Bombs gave her a new ambition; instead of simply providing food to others, she wanted to teach people how to provide for themselves. She describes Food Not Lawns as a "grassroots gardening project geared toward using waste resources to grow organic gardens and encouraging others to share their space, surplus, and ideas toward the betterment of the whole community." The more Flores learned about food, agriculture, and land use, she says, the more she came to see the typical suburban lawn as a symbol of "gross waste and mindless affluence." Flores reveals that there's nothing green about our love of lawns, which gobble up more resources and create more pollution than industrial farming. Her book explains how the weaknesses of our industrial food chain, and the unsustainable terrain of turf that surrounds suburbia have inspired a grassroots movement to grow not grass, but food. Food Not Lawns is the perfect introduction to the permaculture revolution. Flores documents how we've become enslaved by a fossil fuel-based food chain and a consumer culture run amuck, but if the "peak oil" experts prove to be right, our industrialized food system and wasteful way of life will be unsustainable. In a post-petroleum era, people who know how to grow their own produce are going to be very popular. Buy this book, and become one of them! 40 of 43 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not just Gardening--A guide to Activism and Environmentalism,
By Mark R. Anderson "Mark" - Published on Amazon.com
Ce commentaire est de: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community (Paperback)
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.
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