A book review---Edible Estates:Attack on the Front Lawn

A good book that I've just been lent by Dan is called"Edible estates: Attack on the Front Lawn" its by Fritz Haeg and published by Metropolis Books.

I like this book very much, its basically what it says in the title.

It starts with a piece about how much the lawn industry is worth in the US, Oh yes its a US book with only a small mention for the Brits , but still a worthwhile book for all that.

Yep lawns are big in the US, and I mean really big, 1000's of acres of the things over the whole country and they gobble lawn mowers, fertilisers, and very much millions of gallons of water, etc. Not to mention the effort that goes into maintaining lawns.

On thinking about pictures of american gardens and houses I've seen they always seem to have massive lawns,. The US has by-laws making it illegal to have anything but a front lawn in lots of US states. Which seems strange for the land of the free as they call themselves.

There's a pile of case histories of various gardens across the length and breadth of the US so it takes in cold northern states and the over-warm southern states too, some states are almost desert. Yet lawns are kept and it costs the americans dearly especially in water usage.

There's a lot of brackground to why this guy is so big on getting rid of front lawns for what is a smallish book, its in A5 size for us Brits and runs to 150'ish pges and I enjoyed reading what he had to say.

It seems based on permaculture ideas which is good, and he seems big on forest gardens too. Yet he also does some more formal areas we'd recognise here with veg plots set out more in a trad. way. Lines of veg in pretty rows.

I found the book very simple to read, not at all formal and stodgy, the case histories were possibly a bit short for me, but I liked the style of his writing and the variety.

This book gets a solid 8 out 10 from me.