| Wildlife and Nature Books Online in Association with Amazon.com |    |
|
|
|
| The Nature-Friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People | 
| Author: Marlene A. Condon
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $3.97
You Save: $15.98 (80%)
New (27) from $3.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 582345
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 152
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.4
ISBN: 0811732614
Dewey Decimal Number: 639.92
EAN: 9780811732611
ASIN: 0811732614
Publication Date: February 10, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Many people approach gardening as a constant struggle with the outside world. They're perpetually at war with nature, investing in weed killers and fighting off deer and birds, all in an effort to preserve their garden as a pristine patch of earth. Marlene A Condon proposes a radically different method: What if, instead of battling the natural world, we invite it into our backyards? The result is the nature-friendly garden, which attracts and meets the needs of common creatures - rabbits, toads, insects, squirrels, owls, and so on - while maintaining a thriving, varied landscape of flowers and plants. And as this thought-provoking guide demonstrates, coexisting with nature doesn't mean turning your yard into a bramble-infested wilderness. The sustainable, low-impact garden described in these pages is a model of environmental balance, fostering species diversity while keeping wildlife damage and invasive plant growth at an acceptable minimum. Best of all, it offers a privileged look at the workings of nature, and its advice on observing wildlife is sure to open up a new and fascinating world for even the most experienced gardener.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Please don't kill the dandelions! April 23, 2008
Do you have dandelions growing in your lawn? Never manage to rake the leaves from under your trees and bushes, and let the dead flower stalks remain where they fall? Do you see spiderwebs in your yard? Well at last we can stop feeling guilty. The author describes how all of this works to our gardens' advantage. She shows how all of life interconnects--be it predator and prey or flower and weed. Her writing is wonderfully simple, clear, and friendly. It's as though she were talking to you over a cup of coffee. I love this book.
 Inadequate December 21, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Honestly, I expected better from this book, given other reviews. Perhaps if one knows NOTHING about hanging out a woodpecker stick full of peanut butter, this book may offer a new vista. But the book offers so little of interest to anyone with a modicum of common sense, one has to wonder why anyone would want it on their shelf.
Any book from the Audibon Society is a better buy that this one. Save your money.
 Slowly Warming up to Squirrels, thanks to this book... May 29, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I really liked this book on gardening and getting to know the wildlife in your backyard. Marlene Condon makes a good case for gardening in sync with nature versus gardening trying to fight nature, which always proves to be a never-ending. losing battle. I also appreciated very much the tips on feeding birds, and trying to understand the wildlife. The squirrels here in this neck of the woods are a very strange breed, very confrontational, rambunctious; one squirrel had a staring contest with me one morning when I knocked on the window to get it away from some things I had planted. They dug into all the container gardens I put outside, ate my bulbs - I was contamplating squirrel stew for a moment. This book has helped me overcome the squirel problem in a way; I'm sure the owl, or was it a hawk, a cat??? that had a certain squirrel snack on the deck also helped, too. Very inspirational with good tips on gardening. I think she should nearly have a call-in show on public radio....
A Different Way to Look at Your Yard January 15, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I originally found this book in the library and was so impressed with it, I bought a copy for reference. I have a different outlook on what the "ideal" yard should look like. Instead of the usual lawn, I have learned how wildlife and humans can coexist in a different, more natural manner.
An Indispensible Guide to Backyard Wildlife Habitat December 21, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Marlene Condon's understanding of the intricacies of the natural world shines from every page of this wonderfully informative book. Condon makes it clear, in succinct, inviting prose, that she has garnered and is willing to share a great deal of personal knowledge about the critters that flock (and creep, crawl, hop and wriggle) to her paradisical backyard "garden" ... a term which itself can too often mean simply a sterilized plot for producing vegetables, but in Condon's hands reveals its earlier, edenic meaning as a place where man and nature can live together peacefully.
Among the many positive aspects of this beautifully produced book (glossy pages, plentiful color photos, quality binding) I will mention just three: a plethora of delightful natural anecdotes and wildlife factoids that will surprise even the most jaded natural history reader; a crucial chapter on the necessity of accepting--and even celebrating--the role of predation in the natural cycle of life; and thorough appendices of nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, and educational facilities that can perpetuate a reader's awakening desire to integrate wildlife into their gardening experience.
Through it all this book is thickly graced by the author's professional wildlife photography, itself worth the modest price of admission. If the Romantics were correct in identifying the crucial task of the awakening mind as perceiving the remote in the intimate, The Nature-Friendly Garden must be embraced as an important step toward peeling the scales of artificiality from our eyes and opening ourselves--and our gardens--to the myriad wonders that await us. Slugs, bugs and all.
|
|
|
Wildlife, nature and the Environment
Sponsored Links
Learn how to get your own Amazon Book shop | |
|
