Eat What You Grow: How to Have an Undemanding Edible Garden That Is Both Beautiful and Productive

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Alys Fowler trained at the Horticultural Society, the New York Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. Even if you have read her earlier books The Edible Garden then there's still something to be gained from Eat What You Grow as there's a lot more introductory information about Polycultures in the latter.

This book proposes a way of gardening where edible plants are incorporated into gardens, rather than being the sole preserve of allotments and kitchen gardens. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.She is fascinated by urban nature and how we make space for it and was a creative consultant on public spaces and recently helped design the Greenwich Peninsula Gardens. What I enjoyed most about this book is that it is a galvanising treatise on the possibility of a truly nature- centric edible garden, a celebration of biodiversity as well as deliciousness. The book sets out the argument for gardening in this way in the introductory pages and then splits into subsequent sections. The whole thing feels rushed and low-budget, without the care, grace, and commitment of The Edible Garden, which is a jewel of a book. In Eat What You Grow , Alys shows you how to create a rich, biodiverse garden that feeds not only you, but supports a wide range of pollinators, bees and butterflies, as well as other wildlife.

Her inspiration for urban gardening comes from her time volunteering in a community garden on the Lower East side in Manhattan, New York City. She has an allotment and an urban back garden with two chickens, lots of flowers and plenty of vegetables.

Eat What You Grow contains fewer lifestyle pictures, more focus on plants and more focus on science, which I'm sure all comes from a decade more of horticulture and more editorial influence with her publisher.

By comparison, there are far fewer photos, and the ones that are present are grainy and most frustratingly unlabelled! I gave 4 stars rather than 3 because I felt Eat What You Grow had a great deal of poise, especially compared to The Edible Garden, which hinged on a very lifestyle driven TV companion, where many encountered Fowler's distinctive style for the first time. She has written seven books including T he Thrifty Gardener, The Edible Garden, The Thrifty Forager, Abundance , Hidden Nature and A Modern Herbal . The notion of an undemanding edible garden has always seemed like an impossibility to me, but on reading Eat What You Grow, I realise that I am quite wrong.

In 'Eat What You Grow', Alys Fowler shows you how to create a rich, biodiverse garden that feeds not only you, but supports a wide range of pollinators, bees and butterflies, as well as other wildlife. In Eat What You Grow, Alys Fowler offers expertise on cultivating a rich and biodiverse edible garden that will attract wildlife, including important pollinators, while also providing you with incredibly nourishing and wondrously home-grown crops.

In Eat What You Grow, Alys shows you how to create a rich, biodiverse garden that feeds not only you, but supports a wide range of pollinators, bees and butterflies, as well as other wildlife. Split into three main sections, the book takes a holistic approach by building from the basics, which are edible perennials in a variety of sizes and growth habits, up to fillers that self-seed, through to toppings, which are annual plants that will thrive in this mixed system. Interesting and well written, but a huge disappointment after Alys's previous book, The Edible Garden. All of the plants that Fowler has incorporated into this book have been selected so that they hold their own not just in a garden but on the plate. She has presented on BBC's Gardeners' World, The Great British Garden Revival, Our Food , and her own six-part series The Edible Garden .

I was especially intrigued by the Edible Water Garden section, as this is entirely unknown territory for me and I’d love to try my hand at growing edible aquatic plants. And as I now embark on my second year in a new garden, Eat What You Grow has provided a source of inspiration to consider more ambitious plans for each of the seasons. From perennial vegetables that come back year after year, to easy-to-grow delights, she has selected plants that hold their own in both the garden and on the plate. I love all of her books including her novel and this was a splurge, whilst the paper is gorgeous and the pictures are delightful this is a coffee table book or possibly a seed catalog rather than an actual gardening book. It's lacking the introductory detail to give structure, and some of the chapters feel rather cursory.