Product Description

Words of wisdom and humor from an organic gardener.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1427060 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

From Booklist
With the plainspoken, straightforward manner for which New Englanders are famous, Homeyer espouses the philosophy and practices of organic gardening: no insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, or chemical fertilizers should ever make their way into the earth or onto a plant. For Homeyer, such customs reflect not only a respect for the environment but a reverence for the gardening traditions imparted to him first at his grandfather's knee and then honed through the University of New Hampshire Master Gardener programs. Starting with March and progressing through the year in monthly chapters, Homeyer culls the best of his weekly newspaper gardening columns to offer advice on everything from starting seedlings to growing garlic, all from an organic-gardening approach. Along the way, he introduces fellow organic gardeners: some locally infamous, such as 85-year-old Marguerite Tewksbury; others nationally famous, such as renowned garden author Jamaica Kincaid. Spare, succinct, and sincere, Homeyer's guidance is down-home friendly and unthreatening, warm and wise. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Publisher
7 x 10 trim. 10 photos, 3 maps, 33 block prints

About the Author
HENRY HOMEYER is a landscaper and garden designer whose column appears weekly in ten regional newspapers. He is the Vermont and New Hampshire editor of People, Places, and Plants, a New England-only gardening magazine. He also writes for The Boston Globe, Gardener's Companion, Yankee, and other publications.

Customer Reviews

Regional notes for a national audience
It is a tricky thing to adapt columns written with a particular region in mind into a book with a national audience -- a special trick, perhaps, when a kind of gardening calendar is retained to organize the text. Henry Homeyer's practical "reflections and observations" may seem most germane to gardeners in New England, but if you know enough to place his experience in your own climate, you will find plenty to interest you.

What I like best about this book are the pieces that transcend zones entirely, such as a report of his visit to White House gardens and his interview with Jamaica Kincaid. Discreet illustrations (block prints, a few black and white photos, and a few drawings) add to the text. And there is an excellent index, something which alas can no longer be taken for granted in gardening books.

Despite my misgivings about how serviceable some of these essays are beyond New England, Henry Homeyer's plain and personal prose reminded me of the great American garden writer, Henry Mitchell. I think Mitchell would not be unhappy to find this book on a shelf alongside his own.