cover image The Organic Garden: Green Gardening for a Healthy Planet

The Organic Garden: Green Gardening for a Healthy Planet

Allan Shepherd. Collins, $24.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-00-724142-2

Shepherd takes the notion of organic gardening to a new level with this poetic guide that ""treats gardening as the starting point for a whole organic lifestyle."" With a holistic attitude reminiscent of the back-to-the-land hippie days, Shepherd begins with the premise that farmer's markets, community gardens and organic gardening are thriving because ""people have rediscovered what it's like to be part of something."" At turns whimsical and practical, he writes, ""I enter my garden and immediately want to slow down to the pace of a snail."" In this leisurely spirit, the first part delves mainly into atmospheric and social considerations (benches, hedges, fences and sheds) and how to achieve them sustainably. Only then does it address the more traditional gardening topics of microclimate, soil, planting and pests. Shepherd's 10 principles of organic gardening-""create space,"" ""soil is everything,"" ""make a social space,"" among them-provide underpinnings for the overlapping themes of the book, which, although light on the step-by-step instructions novices might expect, provides something less tangible but perhaps more important: a vivid taste of why gardeners love to garden.