Product Description

This classic US bestseller is the authoritative text on edible landscaping. It features a step-by-step guide to designing your own aesthetic yet productive environment using vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs for a combination of ornamental and culinary purposes. It includes descriptions of plants for all temperate habitats, methods for improving soil, tree pruning styles that suit you and your trees, and even gourmet recipes using low-maintenance plants. There are sections on attracting beneficial insects with companion plants, and using planting to shelter your home from erosion, heat, wind and cold. Presenting such a wealth of information in an accessible and absorbing way is certainly no mean feat but Robert manages it with aplomb, and will soon have you creating a world of both beauty and abundance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111717 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 382 pages

Review
This highly original and eminently readable work will be very useful to novice as well as experienced gardeners and professionals interested in edible landscaping. --Robert Woolley, Nurseryman

Designing And Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik is my all time favorite gardening book. Even is you don't have an edible landscape it contains a wealth of information, for landscapes, orchards, and vegetable gardens. Instead of focusing on one particular gardening style, he covers many different schools of thought and practices. Check this one out, I am sure you will enjoy it. --Harvest McCampbell

An uncommonly valuable book. --Paul Hawken, author and businessman

About the Author
I received much of my early training (and numerous continuing-education credits) in life skills from the School of Hard Knocks. I learned my various horticulture-related skills from the inside out by working with clients throughout California and the rest of the country for over 25 years. During that time I've taken on design projects of all sizes, shapes and textures - water gardens, paths and patios, elegant arbors, habitat gardens, innovative home playgrounds, outdoor barbecue areas, deer-resistant gardens and landscapes and low-profile and attractive deer fences, to name just a few. In the late 1970s, with only a high school diploma to my credit, I wrote a big fat book which has become a classic in its field and helped to define the genera of gardening now known as edible landscaping. It's precisely because I had no formal college training in horticulture that I was able to envision and interpret this new interdisciplinary and original approach to gardening and landscaping. Although I've focused primarily on organic, natural, sustainable, integrated systems, permaculture and appropriate horticulture methods, as a result of my continual on-the-job training I've become handy at (and sometimes considered an authority on) a host of garden/landscape-related skills. And I m still trying to graduate from the School of Hard Knocks!