“This thoughtful, intelligent book is all about connectivity, addressing a natural world in which we are the primary influence.” —The New York Times Books Review Many gardeners today want a home landscape that nourishes and fosters wildlife, but they also want beauty, a space for the kids to play, privacy, and maybe even a vegetable patch. Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife. Richly illustrated and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work, The Living Landscape will enable you to create a garden that fulfills both human needs and the needs of wildlife communities.
The Living Landscape is a manifesto, resource, and textbook for architects, landscape architects, environmental planners, students, and others involved in creating human communities. Since its first edition, published in 1990, it has taught its readers how to develop new built environments while conserving natural resources. No other book presents such a comprehensive approach to planning that is rooted in ecology and design. And no other book offers a similar step-by-step method for planning with an emphasis on sustainable development. This second edition of The Living Landscape offers Frederick Steiner’s design-oriented ecological methods to a new generation of students and professionals. The Living Landscape offers • a systematic, highly practical approach to landscape planning that maximizes ecological objectives, community service, and citizen participation • more than 20 challenging case studies that demonstrate how problems were met and overcome, from rural America to large cities • scores of checklists and step-by-step guides • hands-on help with practical zoning, land use, and regulatory issues • coverage of major advances in GIS technology and global sustainability standards • more than 150 illustrations. As Steiner emphasizes throughout this book, all of us have a responsibility to the Earth and to our fellow residents on this planet to plan with vision. We are merely visiting this planet, he notes; we should leave good impressions.
"Being able to 'read' the landscape whilst on a walk makes a huge difference. It is like suddenly seeing the world in colour after being used to a lifetime of black and white. The Living Landscape looks in detail at landscape formation: from rocks, through soil to vegetation and the intricate web of interactions between plants, animals, climate and the people that makes the landscape around us. Each chapter is interspersed with diagrams, sketches and notes that Patrick has taken over two decades of living and working in the countryside. Patrick will inspire you to reconnect with the land as a living entity, not a collection of different scenery, and develop an active relationship with nature and the countryside. This book invites you to actively engage with nature and experience it first hand. Understanding how landscapes evolve is a useful skill for landscape designers, farmers, gardeners and smallholders but it is also a life-enhancing skill all of us can enjoy. Patrick offers us the enduring pleasure that costs nothing and yet offers everything." -- Publisher's description
A critically acclaimed photographic and literary celebration of Ireland now in trade paperback. The book features 120 color photographs of the Irish landscape by Tom Kelly, "the David Muench of Ireland", and poetry by Seamus Heaney. Author Somerville-Large also wrote The Coast of West Cork and Irish Eccentrics.
“With the twinned calamities of climate change and mass extinction weighing heavier and heavier on my nature-besotted soul, here were concrete, affordable actions that I could take, that anyone could take, to help our wild neighbors thrive in the built human environment. And it all starts with nothing more than a seed. Bringing Nature Home is a miracle: a book that summons butterflies." —Margaret Renkl, The Washington Post As development and habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. In his groundbreaking book Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife—native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals. Luckily, there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference.
The use of innovative new materials is an important trend in landscape architecture today. These materials include biodegradable geotextiles, super-absorbent polymers, and plants that react to changing soil conditions. This book presents the available materials and technologies in the context of practical applications.
This volume takes readers on a tour through the latest concepts in landscaping ideas. Editors have included 600 full-color photos for inspiration, plus a 100-page gallery of Southern gardens and a section of step-by-step garden projects and innovative
Gardeners are the front line of defense in our struggle to tackle the problems of global warming, loss of habitat, water shortages, and shrinking biodiversity. In The New American Landscape, author and editor Thomas Christopher brings together the best thinkers on the topic of gardening sustainably, and asks them to describe the future of the sustainable landscape. The discussion unfolds from there, and what results is a collective vision as eloquent as it is diverse. The New American Landscape offers designers a roadmap to a beautiful garden that improves, not degrades the environment. It’s a provocative manifesto about the important role gardens play in creating a more sustainable future that no professional garden designer can afford to miss. John Greenlee and Neil Diboll on the new American meadow garden Rick Darke on balancing natives and exotics in the garden Doug Tallamy on landscapes that welcome wildlife Eric Toensmeier on the sustainable edible garden David Wolfe on gardening sustainable with a changing climate Elaine Ingham on managing soil health David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth on sustainable pest solutions Ed Snodgrass and Linda McIntyre on green roofs in the sustainable residential landscape Thomas Christopher on waterwise gardens Toby Hemenway on whole system garden design The Sustainable Site Initiative on the managing the home landscape as a sustainable site
Applying the principles of Chinese medicine and Native American shamanism to answer the call of the Earth and heal its polluted landscapes • Explains how to build a healing relationship with the natural world by making offerings of thanks and listening to the Earth’s responses • Details methods of diagnosis and several types of Earth acupuncture treatment, including building stone circles, planting crystals, and working with wooden and copper-rod needles • Shares the author’s journey of healing a river with these methods After experiencing a powerful vision of the nuclear power plant near her home and its toxic effects on the Hudson River, acupuncturist Gail Rex was inspired to help heal the river and surrounding lands but was unsure how to begin. Soon after, at a workshop with Cherokee-wisdom teacher Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo, she discovered the answer: she could treat the landscape just as she treated her patients--by taking its pulses and treating the points of stagnant energy and pollution with acupuncture. Tracing her journey from initial vision and pulse taking to building a stone circle to open a major energy meridian of the Hudson, the author reveals how our rivers, valleys, and forests are capable of illness and healing just like a living being. She explains simple practices for attuning with the living landscape and responding appropriately to the messages and images received from the Earth’s intelligence. By making offerings of thanks and asking the land’s permission before every interaction, Gail Rex demonstrates the power of right relationship in action. Drawing upon the principles of Chinese medicine and her work with Native American shamanic traditions, Rex shows how the landscape itself reveals both its imbalances and the opportunities for treatment. Using a broad range of diagnostic tools--including direct observation, principles of feng shui, listening to pulses, and working with maps--she demonstrates ways of identifying the master points of the surrounding landscape. She then explores different methods of Earth acupuncture treatment, including building stone circles, planting crystals, and working with wooden and copper-rod needles to treat these specific points and restore energy balance. Offering not only a proactive method for healing the environment, Rex also reveals how to communicate with the rivers, mountains, trees, and rocks that surround us, allowing each of us to develop an authentic spiritual relationship with the living body of the Earth.
