The Green Gardener's Guide: Simple, Significant Actions to Protect & Preserve Our Planet

by Joe Lamp'l

Book Overview

Gardeners enjoy a connection with the earth unlike anyone else, but until now, a guide that provides powerful and simple actions to protect precious resources has not been available. The Green... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591864267
• ISBN13: 9781591864264
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Cool Springs Press
• Length: 363 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Gardening with Grace

The Green Gardener's Guide offers page after page of insights into how we can change our gardening practices to protect and preserve our natural resources and thereby increase the bounty of nature available to us. Minor modifications in approaches to caring for flowers, lawns and food plants, Lamp'l assures us, can create major positive environmental changes. For instance, he points out, American gardeners could save a minimum of 700 billion gallons of water each year by watering early in the morning instead of in the heat of the day. Capturing roof runoff can mean life for thirsty plants in times of drought. And that's only the beginning. Add in the dramatic drop in heating and cooling costs when trees are planted for shade and windbreak - not to mention the concomitant huge cut in CO 2 emissions - and we're off on a wild learning spree with immensely practical applications. Each chapter enumerates simple, significant actions with specific steps we can take to make a real difference in our own yards and in the greater community, along with interesting facts on the impact of man's carelessness with natural resources and specific changes that have already demonstrated a positive impact. Widely recognized as joe gardener ® , this master gardener and certified landscape professional hosts two TV gardening shows and writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column titled The Gardener Within . If you have a green thumb or are attempting to develop one, you will find this guide a valuable aid. Even if gardening is `not your thing,' you'll learn about lifestyle changes you can make that will add up to big savings all around.

Joe Lamp'l Makes It Easy To Make a Difference

Life for homeowners has become complicated. It seems it is so much easier for most of us to do things the way we always have instead of performing simple acts of greening for the planet. Yet Joe Lamp'l, host of the PBS series GardenSmart and DIY Network's Fresh from the Garden, proves with his book, The Green Gardener's Guide, that performing simple acts to help keep our planet clean and healthy are easy to do. While the book focuses on greening most specifically in the garden, I find it a must for every homeowner who has even the smallest of properties. Millions of people own homes and all should know the basics of maintaining their property. Joe discusses easy ways homeowners can conserve water, recycle plastic, reuse products, compost food material, reduce chemical usage, and build a greener community. Joe's awesome guide points out ways for the consumer to save money as well. These tips include ideas to increase your home's cool factor in the summer and how to increase your home's warmth factor in the winter simply by planting trees and shrubs appropriately on your property. From grasscycling to rain gardening to planting drought tolerant plants; Joe has it all down to a simple and easy to understand science. Greening your landscape can go a long way towards making a difference for our larger environment. Joe understands that it takes small steps to get there and is setting a remarkable example himself by showing the world how easy it is to do. I loved this book and highly recommend it as an excellent greening guide for any gardener or homeowner.

A lot

This is a lot for the beginner, but if you're really into or want to get into the "green movement" then you should pick this one up.

Enthusiastically recommended to gardeners everywhere

Nationally syndicated gardening writer and host of the PBS series "GardenSmart" Joe Lamp'l (a.k.a. Joe Gardener) presents The Green Gardener's Guide: Simple, Significant Actions to Protect & Preserve Our Planet, a straightforward how-to guide that lives up to its title. Written in plain terms for gardeners of all skill and experience levels, The Green Gardener's Guide covers how to reduce water usage (even fixing leaky faucets and collecting roof runoff in rain barrels can make a sizeable difference), minimize the use of chemicals and pesticides, reduce waste through recycling and composting, and much more. Of especial interest is the warning that relying too heavily upon cultivating a single species rather than promoting biodiversity can promote disaster when a parasite that preys upon that one species inevitably appears, as in the great Irish Potato Famine and many other situations. The Green Gardener's Guide is enthusiastically recommended to gardeners everywhere not only for its promotion of social responsibility, but also for its straight-talk and practical advice. "Research conducted by universities, laboratories, and even commercial airports has shown that [Japanese Beetle traps] attract many more beetles than are actually caught. Consequently, susceptible plants along the flight path of the beetles and in the vicinity of traps are likely to suffer much more damage than if no traps are used at all. In most landscape situations, use of Japanese Beetle traps will likely do more harm than good."

Comprehensive Guide to Green Gardening

This book covers all aspects of green gardening. Joe Lamp'l explains why eco-friendly gardening is crucial in making a difference for the environment and that your actions count. For example, Lamp'l discusses how our water drinking supply gets contaminated with the use of pesticides in the garden. He details ways in which to conserve water in the garden. The book will teach you how to compost and make "liquid gold" to fertilize your plants naturally. Composting is not only fun to do (it's cool to watch coffee grinds and vegetable scraps mixed with leaves turn into dirt), it's good for the environment and for the health of your plants. The book instructs how to use trees and shrubs to naturally minimize the use of heat or air conditioning in the home. My favorite section was gardening to protect the ecosystem, as Lamp'l describes ways in which to increase the beneficial wildlife and safely minimize pests. For example, he encourages the home owner to leave standing dead trees, as they are a host to a variety of wildlife. Remember bug zappers? My family had them and I hated them--the constant snapping of insects. Turns out, bug zappers kill mostly useful insects! The book is just loaded with useful information and I highly recommend it. Author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet