What kind of grass is planted behind your house? What insects burrow in your soil, and what birds eat them? What's happening in that compost pile you're so proud of? This book may well change the view from your patio. A former old-style suburban gardener, Sara Stein writes convincingly of the ecological history of suburbia and the necessity of good stewardship of the land stolen from prairies and forests to make our back yards.


From Publishers Weekly
Suburban development has wrought habitat destruction on a large scale, notes the author; our tidy lawns and gardens have wiped out numerous plants and animals, including predators that keep pests in check. Science writer Stein ( My Weeds ) calls our attention to the critical role yards play in supporting biodiversity. She describes how she rebuilt her garden in Westchester County, N.Y., using native plants to create pocket woodlands, berried hedgerows and a meadow. Stein gives a fine explanation of the difference between cool-weather lawn grasses and the hot-weather varieties. She disdains the popular "Meadow-in-a-can," reporting that making a real meadow requires approximately three years, and discusses the need to attract the declining frog, toad and turtle populations. This is a valuable book. Illustrations. Author tour. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Stein, who has a garden in Pound Ridge, New York, wrote about her experience in My Weeds: A Gardener's Botany ( LJ 3/1/89). She sadly realized, however, that in creating her garden animals had been banished from her Eden. Thus began her "reeducation of a gardener" and the realization that backyards, like rain forests, are an ecosystem. Stein recounts her efforts in planting berry-producing shrubs, learning to live with moles (replace the lawn with a meadow), dealing with insect pests (use resistant varieties of plants), and rejuvenating grass by scheduled burning. Her advice is logical and environmentally sound, but her writing tends to ramble. Line drawings and several appendixes on suggested plants accompany the text. Stein's book aims to refocus the philosophy of backyard gardening and is recommended for public library collections that concentrate on organic and environmental gardening.- Eva Lautemann, Dekalb Coll. Lib., Clarkston, Ga.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Washington Post
By offering readers a thousand and one fun things to know and do, Stein has made a contribution to environmental literature that is both useful and delightful.


Michael Pollan, author of Second Nature
A gentle but important manifesto. It joins the ecologist's vision to the gardener's art in the urgent work of translating the American lawn into something more beautiful and interesting and alive.


From Kirkus Reviews
A personal perspective on the growing movement toward more natural and ecologically sound gardens in which snakes are as welcome as butterflies. In chapters that loosely follow the course of a year-- beginning in the fall and ending the following Thanksgiving--Stein (My Weeds, 1988, etc.) describes how she came to change radically the way she gardened. The author, who lives with her husband on six acres in Pound Ridge, New York, began to question conventional practices--large lawns surrounded by neat beds of flowers and occasional specimen plantings--when, a few years ago, she noticed the absence of many creatures she could recall from childhood. Creatures like orioles, bluebirds, box turtles, and Monarch butterflies, once common, were seen no more. Stein began reading books and consulting experts, and decided to try to reverse the trend by changing the way she maintained her land. To restore the delicate balance necessary for a native ecology to flourish, she planted not only shrubs and trees native to the region but ones that would encourage birds and beneficial insects to return. She deepened her pond so that fish and turtles could flourish in water purified by appropriate plant life; replaced most flower beds with plantings of native flowers and shrubs; restricted the lawns to a small patch; seeded the old lawns with native grasses; and began to restore woodland areas to their pristine state. Stein still plants favorite foreign species, but argues forcefully that the old methods of gardening not only require inordinate amounts of labor and chemicals to keep unsuitable plants alive but are dangerously inhospitable to indigenous inhabitants. A persuasive and informed plea to change the way we garden, thoughtfully defying old wisdom and suggesting, without ever being didactic, just what can be achieved even on the smallest suburban lot. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Published to rave reviews in 1993, Noah's Garden shows us how our landscape style of neat yards and gardens has devastated suburban ecology, wiping out entire communities of plants and animals by stripping bare their habitats and destroying their food supplies. When Stein realized what her intensive efforts at making a traditional garden had done, she set out to "ungarden." Her book interweaves an account of her efforts with an explanation of the ecology of gardens. Noah's Garden has become the bible of the new environmental gardening movement, and the author is one of its most popular spokespersons.

ANNOTATION

This book shows us how our landscape style of neat yards and gardens has devastated suburban ecology, wiping out entire communities of plants and animals. When Stein realized what her intensive efforts at making a garden had done, she set out to "ungarden." Her book interweaves an account of her efforts with an explanation of the ecology of gardens. Illustrations.

FROM THE PUBLISHER