A Lawn Chair Gardener’s Guide to a Balanced Life and a More Balanced World is for gardeners interested in establishing eco-friendly yards that create food and habitat for both people and wildlife with minimal time and effort. It’s for people who enjoy being outside, hope to squeeze in a couple hours per week (or month) to garden and want their garden to make a positive impact on the world. This book is meant for both beginning and experienced gardeners who are venturing into the world of edibles and natives and gardening with an environmental perspective.
Even though this is a guidebook, it is entertaining and easy to read. This book outlines the environmental impacts of current yard care practices and takes a beginner “lawn chair gardener” through all of the steps needed to establish and maintain a low-maintenance, low-stress, eco-friendly landscapes including native gardens and edible gardens. This book also includes 40 easy recipes and step-by-step directions on how to freeze extra bounties.
This 26,401 word book is divided into fourteen chapters. The beginning of the book explores the concept of lawn chair gardening and how gardens support balance in a person’s life. Then lawn chair gardening is brought to a global stage by demonstrating how gardens can change the world one yard at a time by limiting grass to only what we use as play space and planting the rest as beneficial, functional plants such as native plants or edible plants in gardens, raingardens and shorelines. These types of gardens encourage water conservation and filtration, energy conservation (especially with fewer “food miles”), increased habitat and biodiversity, less air pollution and fewer chemicals needed. It is the author’s hope that when her kids are grown-up, having a purely aesthetic yard with only grass and pointless ornamental plants that provide no food or habitat will be as foreign to them as putting asphalt under playground equipment (which was common practice when she was a kid).
Chapters four through fourteen take readers step-by-step on exactly how to establish a garden and what to do with the bounty. In this section you will find…
• a “relationship” survey to help readers choose which types of garden they are most compatible with
• garden and landscape design steps
• instructions on “winter sowing” – an easy, inexpensive method of starting seeds
• how to choose plants and where to buy plants (native plants are not available at big box stores and many nurseries)
• a list of tools that are really handy to have
• how to promote beneficial insects to decrease or eliminate the need for pesticides
• complete information and resources on tending your garden including information on weed identification, (how to avoid) fertilizers and pesticides, watering, dividing and trimming
• detailed information on defending gardens against insects, diseases and animals
• fall or spring clean-up instructions
• 40 easy recipes that take 30 minutes or less to prepare
• complete information on how to safely freeze extra crops
