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A Garden Ecology


Gaia’s Garden  by Toby Hemenway

Chelsea Green Publishing Co, White River Junction, Vermont ( 24.95)


This is a book I would have loved to have written because so much of it 
reminds me of my own experience and also brings new insight to my adventures 
on the land. 

This book is also one I would have loved to have researched, because the 
depth of knowledge is immediately noted and the inspiration and surehanded 
personal experience available in it are convincingly from a practitioner 
rather than an observer. For a fellow professional gardener, this Guide to 
Home-Scale Permaculture, rings very true in what its says ( the soil is what 
makes the garden and the garden also makes) as well as how the book reveals 
the way to structure a place of fruitful beauty that is built to last.

Toby Hemenway’s  Gaia’s Garden  is a gardener’s blueprint for ecological 
abundance from the ground up. Or perhaps, make that from a few feet beneath 
the surface of the soil, all the way to the topmost branches of the trees 
planted on the garden’s far northern edge. And here we must underscore that 
home and garden are very important terms here. Important because a great deal 
of  Permaculture literature has been devoted to large-scale land projects or 
have described systems that have been created in rural , even wilderness 
settings, frequently harsh, where it seems that success is  somewhat of a 
matter of life and death.

 Instead, Hemenway describes how one can remake the four to six thousand 
square feet found in your own backyard with the result that it is beautiful, 
productive and self-sustaining. Hemenway’s guide is a map to get back to the 
land and all you have to do is go out your back door. There you have 
installed a rainwater harvesting system either for economy, water quality or 
both, planted as many of your favorite edible and ornamental plants and trees 
based on where the sun travels overhead and what the terrain of your land is, 
and have created a personal place that physically invites you within it. 

Gaia’s Garden  is one that also invites creatures to share the space with 
you. My favorite section contains the author’s authentic description of " a 
living fertile soil….a growing earth…with industrious workers of the 
soil…helpers…(that) churn and tunnel and munch and spawn, chiseling minerals 
from rock and humus, all the while loosing a veritable storm of fertility to 
be shared with plants." Here I see Hemenway tapping away at his keyboard with 
dirt under his nails. The book is filled with much that is as genuinely 
poetic as it is pragmatic.

Water is so crucial that to say so is trite. We all know about water. Without 
it we’re on Mars. But water knowledge and management  is an art in 
Permaculture design. Water for Every Farm , by P.A. Yeomans, is listed in the 
bibliography, and it was Yeomans who first laid down the Permaculture 
framework for water management that was later popularized by Bill Mollison in 
his books and in his many design courses.  Hemenway explores the basic 
water-keeper wisdom of earth design, plant canopies, natural water storage 
and budgeting, and provides in his text practical applications for the 
homeowner, solutions that fundamentally alter the irrigation cycle as well as 
promote the use of gray-water under circumstances where it is appropriate. 

The Plan is very much the main object in the practice of permaculture, 
whether its for acres or square feet, and Hemenway has succeeded in taking 
all the components of permaculture design and making them accessible to 
anyone. 

Toby Hemenway could have subtitled his book:  Permaculture Gardens for Every 
Home.

You will re-learn much if you already think you know it all, and if you are 
just beginning there is no better place to start than with Gaia’s Garden.

reviewed by Steven Sprinkel
Ojai, CA