Book Review and Preview: The Living Landscape By Rick Darke and Douglas Tallamy

This is a book review and preview of the book The Living Landscape: Designing for beauty and biodiversity in the home garden by Rick Darke and Douglas Tallamy that is due to be published on 1 July 2014.

This book is written by clever duo Rick Darke a landscape design consultant, author, lecturer and photographer based in Pennsylvania and Douglas Tallamy a lecturer, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology in Delaware.

 

 

This is a gardening book which wants to take gardeners back to designing their gardens for beauty as well as creating a landscape that is full of life.

 

Our home gardens are part of the larger landscape, all with layers and the book explains the role plants play in the larger environment - fruit for birds, food for bugs, bees to pollinate. The book then moves on to put this information into context and how we can design our home gardens to implement these design strategies.

 

There are charts and natives for each region of the USA which although I can't use for my Australian garden I still get the gist of what is implied and what to consider when planning my garden at home.

 

The realisation that us modern gardeners using artificial turf and fake plants aren't really doing much to help the living landscape and this has made me stop and think about growing living lawn no matter how much water restrictions and hot summer try to fight against it!

 

I recommend this book to garden lovers who are concerned and considerate of our environment.

I give this book 3 stars

Jarrah Jungle's Star Rating:
1 Bad - I'd rather eat brussel sprouts topped with anchovies than read this again
2 Not Good - I'd rather watch re-runs of Neighbours than read this again
3 Ok - I'm sitting on the fence - its not great but not terrible either
4 Good - I'd pass up a pack of tim tams for this read
5 Great - I'd pass up a date with Johnny Depp for this read

The Living Landscape can be purchased from Amazon here

Sharing my book review on Good Reads here

Disclosure: NetGalley partner with bloggers such as me to help promote their product. As part of this promotion I was given this eBook published by Timber Press to review. I have not received any payment or compensation for this review. I have not been told what to say about this product, I am free to form my own opinion and share them in my own words. All opinions are my own.
 

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[Image via Amazon]