Paradise Lot by Eric Toensmeier
As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast:
Paradise Lot by Eric Toensmeier
This book came out in 2013, and the subtitle is Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the City. It's a very timely book.
Publishers Weekly said,
"In this charming, true-life tale of urban regeneration and the birth of a forest garden movement, Toensmeier, famous among permaculture enthusiasts for his Perennial Vegetables and as coauthor of Edible Forest Gardens, tells the story behind the Holyoke, Mass., garden that's featured as a test case in the latter, which, in the course of eight years, he and Bates transformed it from a bare backyard wasteland into a flourishing, edible Eden.
In true permaculture fashion, the book follows not only the progression of the garden but also its influence on and relations with its creators’ lives―including a surprisingly Austen-like romantic element―their neighborhood, and the larger permaculture and forest gardening community. Bates, whose nursery business, Food Forest Farm, is an offshoot of this garden, contributes philosophical and personal essays interspersed throughout the narrative.
Fans of Toensmeier and Bates’s work will be thrilled to read the details of their experiments with polycultures, their problems with and solutions for pests and overly aggressive plants, and their idiosyncratic plant choices.
Adventurous readers with conventional gardens and lawns may be inspired to venture into the more integrated, evolutionary approach that this book so vividly and appealingly portrays."
The book is 240 pages of detailed ideas and inspiration for anyone interested in urban agriculture and permaculture.
SI HORTUM IN HORTORIA PODCASTA IN BIBLIOTEHCA HABES, NIHIL DEERIT.