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Toby Hemenway
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Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition Paperback – April 1, 2009

by Toby Hemenway (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 2,332 ratings
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"Gaia's Garden will be recorded in history as a milestone for gardeners and landscapers. . . An amazing achievement."--Paul Stamets

The classic book about ecological gardening--whatever size your garden--with over 250,000 copies sold!

"A great book!"--Men's Journal

Gaia’s Garden has sparked the imagination of home gardeners the world over by introducing a simple message: working with nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens.

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--even for the beginner--to create a “backyard ecosystem” by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:

  • Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure
  • Catching and conserving water in the landscape
  • Providing a rewilded and biodiverse habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and animals
  • Growing an edible “forest” that yields seasonal fruits, nuts, and other foods

This revised and updated edition also features a 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.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    313 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Chelsea Green Publishing
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    8 x 1 x 10 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1603580298
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1603580298
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

soil fertility; landscape; habitat; edible forest; permaculture
permaculture; keyhole garden; garden permaculture; ecology; garden; home-scale topography; permaculture; garden
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Customer Reviews
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Price — — —
Keyhole Garden Beds A keyhole bed planted with cabbages, tomatoes, and pathside greens and herbs in a space 8 to 10 feet in diameter. Several keyhole beds can extend from a central path to create a garden with pleasing curves and plenty of accessible bed space. A mandala garden. A circular pattern of nested keyhole beds is both beautiful and space-conserving.
wetland; garden; permaculture

A graywater wetland

soil fertility; landscape; habitat; edible forest; permaculture

soil fertility; landscape; habitat; edible forest; permaculture

soil fertility; landscape; habitat; edible forest; permaculture

permaculture; wetland; forest garden; shrubs; plants

A forest garden for a rectangular yard

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Become a sustainable producer of resources instead of a wasteful consumer. This wonderful book shows you how by helping you create and enhance beautiful backyard ecosystems within the garden. Put this book into action, and you'll begin to live an example that positively shifts your own community and beyond. Best of all, doing so with this book is simple, juicy, and fun."--Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond and http://www.HarvestingRainwater.com



"Toby's fun, well-grounded, and engaging book is fast becoming a classic, and deservedly so. Practical yet visionary, broad-ranging yet focused on the basics one needs to know, this is a great place to start on the permaculture path. The new edition builds solidly on the success of the first. Congratulations!"--Dave Jacke, co-author of the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens



"The world didn't come with an operating manual, so it's a good thing that some wise people have from time to time written them. Gaia's Garden is one of the more important, a book that will be absolutely necessary in the world ahead."--Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and Hope, Human and Wild




"Permaculture gardens are no longer a thing of the future. They are here to stay and flourish. Gaia's Garden is enlightening and required reading for all people who desire to make their home's landscape healthy, sustainable, and healing."--Robert Kourik, author of Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape--Naturally



"Gaia's Garden is simply the best permaculture book ever written, and is in the running for best gardening book ever written. No one should be without it."--Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front



"Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden will be recorded in history as a milestone for gardeners and landscapers--a fusion of the practical and the visionary--using the natural intelligence of Earth's symbiotic communities to strengthen and sustain ecosystems in which humans are a partner, not a competitor. An amazing achievement showing how we can and must live in harmony with nature!"--Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

Review

"Outlines a revolutionary course for the future of gardening and agriculture."--Dr. John Todd, founder of The New Alchemy Institute (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden.)



"Takes the native plants and organic gardening movement to the next level."--Joel M. Lerner, The Washington Post (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)



"There is so much wisdom in Gaia's Garden that I would need a dozen columns to do it justice. . . a bold, wonderful, nature-embracing and completely sensible vision of the future."--Justin Siskin, Los Angeles Daily News (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)



"Practical science for making your yard produce food and beauty."--Rose O'Donnell, The Seattle Times (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)




"A gardener's blueprint for ecological abundance from the ground up."--Steve Spreckel, Acres USA (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)




"This is a book you will use and re-use, and enjoy having around for a long time."--Peter Bane, The Permaculture Activist (Refers to the first edition of Gaia's Garden)


Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Chelsea Green Publishing; 2nd edition (April 1, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 313 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1603580298
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1603580298
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 1 x 10 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 2,332 ratings

About the author

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Toby Hemenway

Toby Hemenway

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Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, which for the past six years has been the world's best-selling book on permaculture, a design approach based on ecology for creating sustainable landscapes, homes, communities, and workplaces. He has been an adjunct professor in the School of Graduate Education at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and a biologist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild. He teaches, consults, and lectures on permaculture and ecological design throughout the US and other countries. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Natural Home, Whole Earth Review, and American Gardener. He lives in Sebastopol, California, where he is developing sites and resources for urban and small-town sustainability.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
2,332 global ratings
DO NOT GET DIGITAL VERSION -- UNLESS YOU MUST
4 Stars
DO NOT GET DIGITAL VERSION -- UNLESS YOU MUST
First of all--Woah. What a stunner this book is. If your entering the ecological gardening field fresh and have been exposed to many of the arguments out there in mainstream land when it comes to commonsense stuff regarding plants, weeds, natives, non-natives, exotics, and so-called invasive plants, be prepared to get your socks blown off.Furthermore, this book is an invaluable addition to the literature and I believe Gaia's Garden to be the perfect beginners book on permaculture-based practices in the garden or edible tree forest you need to build.PLEASE, IF YOU CAN WAIT, PLEASE ORDER THE PHYSICAL BOOK. THe digital e-book is terrible when it comes to charts. I even screencapped an important section to try and copy it to my notebook, but it was nearly impossible to read, even blown up.OR, order the digital version of Gaia's Garden and a physical copy of the two volume Edible Forest Gardens at the same time. But read Gaia's first, especially if you are just entering this field.
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Top reviews from the United States

Brandon
5.0 out of 5 stars Informative
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2024
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This book was full of solid down to earth information. Great illustrations and descriptions. My garden improved dramatically.
One person found this helpful
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DMG
5.0 out of 5 stars The Permaculture Bible
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2013
Verified Purchase
For me, permaculture in its truest sense is not really an option, you see my "hippyness" only goes so far. There are people in Portland and Brooklyn that recycle their own excrement and use it to grow the cherry tomatoes that they feed to their gender neutral, vegan, and likely completely naked offspring. To these people, this book is merely evidence that human kind should collectively commit suicide...it is, after all, made of paper and therefore a tree was unceremoniously sacrificed so that styrofoam abusers like myself could learn that our every flatulent outburst kills yet another ecosystem. For those of us, though, who drink PBR because we like the way is makes us feel, who eat delicious animals and who proudly drive anywhere the hell we want - we can learn something from this manual. Widely considered to be the founding document of the permaculture movement, this book goes to great lengths to provide you with a very abstract template for transforming your craptastic sliver of suburbia into a useable, durable and aesthetically pleasing ecosystem. Lets face it, those bearded douche-bags in Bed-Stuy and the hirsute dumpster divers in OR-eh-gone are right about a few things: The Strokes, Trucker Hats and the fact that you, personally, are destroying the planet. Sure, you could Al Gore this sitch and buy carbon credits and if that's the case, hit me up as I'll gladly sell you as many as you need (Bitcoin accepted!). Assuming you're not a mindless twit who readily trades your cold hard cash for a the privilege of owning, um, nothing, then perhaps this book is the Gandolph to your Bilbo. It is well-written and exceptionally detailed with information and insight for complete newbies to experienced crap recyclers. Like many sub, sub-cultures, "Permaculture" can seem cult-like...one reason why books, this book, are great options. It stands to reason that no one read the "Complete Guide to Scientology" prior to signing up to be a "Thetanamy" or whatever Scientologists call their version of Juggalos. With this guide, you can limp in or opt out of the Permaculture movement without sacrifice or the potential for excommunication. If you're anything like me you'll quickly identify the information that lies within your personal realm of the possible and eschew the rest as Old Testament-like superlatives, best referenced in hushed tones or better, completely ignored. I am convinced that more should read this book, regardless as it certainly contains something for everyone...even Ann Coulter, who I'm thinking would use it to torture and kill babies. Not the author's intent I'd hope, but nothing is perfect. Buy the book, learn something and change you're world a little...please.
44 people found this helpful
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Thomas I. Ellis
5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Manual for All Gardeners on the Planet
Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2017
Verified Purchase
If you have room on your shelves for only one book on gardening, this should be it. Toby Hemenway, who unfortunately passed away last December, was simultaneously a master gardener, a superb writer, and a man of immense knowledge and decency.

His book is a comprehensive gardening manual for suburbanites, but it is much more--it is a roadmap to a revolution. Not, of course, a revolution as it is normally imagined--storming the barricades and all that. But rather, a deeper, more fundamental revolution in the way we live and think, starting, quite literally, from the ground up. (His chapter on topsoil will fundamentally change the way you look at the stuff under your feet!)

Until this book came along, Permaculture was widely marginalized and stereotyped as a kind of quaint hippie agrarian movement, a vestige of the 70s, for folks who wanted to abandon modern industrial civilization to go back to the land, buy a few acres, and grow their own food. But Hemenway understood that this movement was not just about growing food, and not simply for hippie farmers, but a fundamental shift in orientation for our civilization with practical implications for everyone--including and especially city dwellers and suburbanites.

For those who simply seek detailed gardening advice, on what to plant, when, and where, this book has copious information, practical advice, and suggestions, along with tables and charts galore. But it is much, much more. It introduces us to Permaculture as a way of thinking, a way of understanding design as a regenerative process, and of understanding ourselves as a part of, rather than apart from, the natural world we inhabit.
Read it closely and carefully, and you will never be the same--you will transform not only your backyard, but also your understanding of life itself, and of your place in it. You will find yourself as part of a worldwide movement of quiet revolutionaries who are healing our planet one backyard at a time, and not only growing delicious, abundant food, but sowing the seeds of a regenerative future for all our children. Toby Hemenway has passed away--a great loss to our planet--but in this book, he has preserved and transmitted the essence of his practical knowledge and wisdom to all the rest of us. Read it, learn it, consult it, and then join the revolution, the healing process for our sick and dying planet, starting in your own back yard.
16 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Paolo
5.0 out of 5 stars Must have!
Reviewed in Italy on September 11, 2023
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The book you must have. Period.
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Nordwind
5.0 out of 5 stars Sehr gut!
Reviewed in Germany on June 23, 2021
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Ein sehr schönes Buch. Verdeutlicht viele der Ideen der Permakultur in verständlicher Weise, deren Sinn ich bislang nicht verstanden hatte. Bisher eins der besten Bücher zum Thema !
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V. Rawat
5.0 out of 5 stars Permaculture 101
Reviewed in India on June 8, 2019
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This is a great introduction to the concepts and implementation of permaculture principles.
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RRF
5.0 out of 5 stars inspirational
Reviewed in Australia on February 17, 2023
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Okay, introduction to the topic with lots of great, practical, applicable tips and an enjoyable and inspirational read with lots of ideas
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Jeannette
5.0 out of 5 stars Un "must" para cada jardinero
Reviewed in Spain on January 17, 2017
Verified Purchase
El libro es una maravilla - un "must have" para cada jardiner@. Te explica bien como crear y mantener un ecosistema complejo que puede alimentarte y que funcione sin pesticidas etc. y abonos químicos. Plantas útiles, comunidades de plantas, como atraer insectos y animales útiles, como aprovechar mejor el espacio disponible y un sinfín de temas - un manual imprescindible. Lamentablemente no encontré nada parecido en español ni tampoco una traducción.
2 people found this helpful
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