Fitness the Dynamic Gardening Way: A Health and Wellness Lifestyle

Anyone who has wrestled with a soil-bound root knows that gardening can be a strenuous activity. Rather than complain about the physical strain involved, advises Restuccio, consider it an exercise--one that beautifies the home landscape and produces flowers, fruits and vegetables. He describes gardening as part of a lifelong ``health and wellness lifestyle'' that also includes proper diet, exercise, family togetherness and conservation of the earth's resources. He recommends intensive organic gardening techniques, not just because they improve the quality of the soil but because they provide a physical workout as well. Here are ``sets'' to do while weeding, double-digging a bed or using a posthole digger. Restuccio takes a novel yet sensible approach to exercise, and he brings together topics--from dieting to integrated pest management--that normally wouldn't be addressed in just one volume. However, the amateurish quality of this book, with its crude illustrations, redundant self-promotion, inaccuracies and typos, greatly dulls the force of its timely message. (May)