What do you think?
Rate this book
The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening
Gardeners are the front line of defense in our struggle to tackle the problems of global warming, loss of habitat, water shortages, and shrinking biodiversity. In The New American Landscape , author and editor Thomas Christopher brings together the best thinkers on the topic of gardening sustainably, and asks them to describe the future of the sustainable landscape. The discussion unfolds from there, and what results is a collective vision as eloquent as it is diverse.
The New American Landscape offers designers a roadmap to a beautiful garden that improves, not degrades the environment. It’s a provocative manifesto about the important role gardens play in creating a more sustainable future that no professional garden designer can afford to miss.
The New American Landscape offers designers a roadmap to a beautiful garden that improves, not degrades the environment. It’s a provocative manifesto about the important role gardens play in creating a more sustainable future that no professional garden designer can afford to miss.
255 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2011
8 people are currently reading
288 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Christopher
28 books3 followersTom Christopher is a reporter on garden and the environment.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 30, 2011
This book features chapters written by a diverse group of knowledgeable horticulturists and gardeners on a variety of subjects such as the new American meadow garden, balancing natives and exotics in the garden, landscapes that welcome wildlife, the sustainable edible garden, gardening sustainably in a changing climate, and on and on. There are eleven chapters in all, edited and introduced by Thomas Christopher, who has been reporting on gardening and environmental issues for more than twenty-five years. The thing that ties all these various chapters together is that they feature a sustainable approach to gardening.
The subjects that are covered affect gardeners everywhere and the writers' commonsense step-by-step approach demonstrates how gardeners' sustainable practices positively shape our environment. Gardeners, after all, are on the front line of defense as we struggle to deal with problems like loss of habitat, water shortages, shrinking biodiversity, and, the biggie, global climate change, and how we garden in our own backyard can have an impact for good or ill on each of those important issues.
Some of the suggestions here for improving our sustainable gardening practices include the following:
1. Plant a tree. If you can only do one thing, this may be the very best thing you can do to help the environment. Trees take up CO2 and reduce emissions from air conditioning. Furthermore, they help to cool our yards and houses - another reason that we here in Texas need to do everything within our power to save trees during this drought.
2. Recycle and reduce use of disposable products. For example, do not use non-biodegradable mulches such as those made of plastic. Use natural, organic mulches.
3. Improve nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency. One of the writers suggests, for example, using clover/grass mixes for your lawn. Clover fixes nitrogen in the soil.
4. Reduce fossil fuel usage. Use tools that do not require fossil fuels whenever possible and use the ones that do require fossil fuel as sparingly as possible.
5. Increase soil carbon sequestration. One way to do this is to employ a no-till, no-dig method of gardening known as lasagna gardening. It involves layering rather than tilling and has become increasingly popular among organic gardeners.
6. Use renewable energy sources whenever possible.
These suggestions and this book work for gardeners with a wide range of experience. Both the veteran gardener and the newbie can learn a lot here. This is an impressive and thought-provoking book, one that belongs on the shelf of every gardener who is concerned about the environment and the future of the planet. That, I think, is every gardener.
The subjects that are covered affect gardeners everywhere and the writers' commonsense step-by-step approach demonstrates how gardeners' sustainable practices positively shape our environment. Gardeners, after all, are on the front line of defense as we struggle to deal with problems like loss of habitat, water shortages, shrinking biodiversity, and, the biggie, global climate change, and how we garden in our own backyard can have an impact for good or ill on each of those important issues.
Some of the suggestions here for improving our sustainable gardening practices include the following:
1. Plant a tree. If you can only do one thing, this may be the very best thing you can do to help the environment. Trees take up CO2 and reduce emissions from air conditioning. Furthermore, they help to cool our yards and houses - another reason that we here in Texas need to do everything within our power to save trees during this drought.
2. Recycle and reduce use of disposable products. For example, do not use non-biodegradable mulches such as those made of plastic. Use natural, organic mulches.
3. Improve nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency. One of the writers suggests, for example, using clover/grass mixes for your lawn. Clover fixes nitrogen in the soil.
4. Reduce fossil fuel usage. Use tools that do not require fossil fuels whenever possible and use the ones that do require fossil fuel as sparingly as possible.
5. Increase soil carbon sequestration. One way to do this is to employ a no-till, no-dig method of gardening known as lasagna gardening. It involves layering rather than tilling and has become increasingly popular among organic gardeners.
6. Use renewable energy sources whenever possible.
These suggestions and this book work for gardeners with a wide range of experience. Both the veteran gardener and the newbie can learn a lot here. This is an impressive and thought-provoking book, one that belongs on the shelf of every gardener who is concerned about the environment and the future of the planet. That, I think, is every gardener.
November 13, 2022
The most instructive chapter to me was Elaine Ingham’s on soil health, but I found the two chapters on natives (Darke and Tallamy) thought provoking as well.
Balancing Natives and Exotics in the Garden
Rick Darke asks what we really mean by “native” (Amsonia and Calycanthus are genetically considered natives but aren’t actually native to the Pennsylvania Piedmont) and whether we might be better served by evaluating “how [plants] function in today’s ecology” rather than some arbitrary were-they-in-this-country-1000-years-ago status. “Now that we’re here and our presence is so pervasive, will there ever be any new native species?” He argues that gardens are not natural habitats and that we have different goals for them that can’t always be fulfilled by native plants. Since the eastern forest is primarily deciduous, for example, the selection of evergreen shrubs and trees for screening is limited (Kalmia, Tsuga, and Juniperus virginiana for PA, Ilex glabra and opaca if you expand to the Coastal Plain). Similarly, many useful food plants are not native but are not harmful to the local ecology (an apple tree sustains much wildlife). In addition, many exotics evolved alongside imported diseases and can provide disease resistance that our natives lack.
More important to him than native status is whether a garden can sustain and perpetuate itself without requiring huge inputs and without harming the local ecosystem. He uses non-natives where they work, but he removed a Euonymus alatus that was “completely adapted to conditions in my garden” because “my walks in the adjacent woodland preserve made me aware that this species was self-sowing and displacing significant parts of the indigenous shrub layer. Was my lone plant responsible? Certainly not. . . . My decision was based on not wanting to contribute to the problem, even in a small way.”
I love his focus on regionality and creating gardens that expresses their locale. Much of my interest in natives is wanting the care and selection that has gone into classic garden plants to go into American plants to see what kinds of American gardens we can produce. England has its riotously floral cottage gardens, Japan its naturalistic tea and pond gardens, Persia its fragrant, fruit-filled paradise gardens. What can we have if we develop more of our ornamentals and food plants like we have with rhododendrons and pecans?
Darke’s garden is at least 3/4 native to the PA Piedmont, which makes it very reflective of its place, but he also has “exotics” that perform a specific function. This makes me think how the concept of local can be changed by its inhabitants: to me, hostas and aucuba are as much a part of Lansdowne as rhododendrons and sycamores, present as they are in the gardens we inherited from the late Victorians who built it.
Flipping the Paradigm: Landscapes That Welcome Wildlife
Douglas Tallamy argues that natives are necessary to maintain diversity because so much wildlife has evolved specifically to use these plants. I wish he had more examples than just the monarch, but he has a lot of cute pictures of birds, so I forgive him.
Managing Soil Health
Elaine Ingham explains what we actually mean when we talk about roots needing to breathe. They don’t actually; it’s the bacteria and fungi that thrive in aerobic environments that we want to cultivate and the anaerobic ones we want to avoid.
Actinobacteria help to form humus (and most antibiotics we use) but release compounds that brassicas like but may harm others. They can be identified by a before-the-rain smell.
Anaerobes produce very acidic waste, which is why bogs are acidic.
Bacteria are better at decomposing simple molecules, while fungi are better at complex (lignin, cellulose, humus). Bacteria thrive in nitrogen-rich environments.
Clear, narrow hyphae tend to be disease fungi, while colored, thick hyphae tend to be beneficial. Mycorrhizal fungi are harmful to brassicas.
Annuals need more nitrate (NH4) than ammonium (NO3); perennials the opposite. All starts as ammonium produced from air (N2) by nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but aerobic nitrifying bacteria can convert it to nitrate. If the soil is dominated by fungi, it remains ammonium. In anaerobic conditions (compacted soil), denitrifying bacteria convert ammonium and nitrate back to gases and create acid rain.
Weeds like 10:1 ratio of bacteria biomass to fungal, while veggies like 3-4:1-2 and forests 100-1000:1.
Anaerobic soil organisms produce acid, alcohol, formaldehyde, phenolic compounds, which are toxic to most plants other than ones adapted to wetlands.
Balancing Natives and Exotics in the Garden
Rick Darke asks what we really mean by “native” (Amsonia and Calycanthus are genetically considered natives but aren’t actually native to the Pennsylvania Piedmont) and whether we might be better served by evaluating “how [plants] function in today’s ecology” rather than some arbitrary were-they-in-this-country-1000-years-ago status. “Now that we’re here and our presence is so pervasive, will there ever be any new native species?” He argues that gardens are not natural habitats and that we have different goals for them that can’t always be fulfilled by native plants. Since the eastern forest is primarily deciduous, for example, the selection of evergreen shrubs and trees for screening is limited (Kalmia, Tsuga, and Juniperus virginiana for PA, Ilex glabra and opaca if you expand to the Coastal Plain). Similarly, many useful food plants are not native but are not harmful to the local ecology (an apple tree sustains much wildlife). In addition, many exotics evolved alongside imported diseases and can provide disease resistance that our natives lack.
More important to him than native status is whether a garden can sustain and perpetuate itself without requiring huge inputs and without harming the local ecosystem. He uses non-natives where they work, but he removed a Euonymus alatus that was “completely adapted to conditions in my garden” because “my walks in the adjacent woodland preserve made me aware that this species was self-sowing and displacing significant parts of the indigenous shrub layer. Was my lone plant responsible? Certainly not. . . . My decision was based on not wanting to contribute to the problem, even in a small way.”
I love his focus on regionality and creating gardens that expresses their locale. Much of my interest in natives is wanting the care and selection that has gone into classic garden plants to go into American plants to see what kinds of American gardens we can produce. England has its riotously floral cottage gardens, Japan its naturalistic tea and pond gardens, Persia its fragrant, fruit-filled paradise gardens. What can we have if we develop more of our ornamentals and food plants like we have with rhododendrons and pecans?
Darke’s garden is at least 3/4 native to the PA Piedmont, which makes it very reflective of its place, but he also has “exotics” that perform a specific function. This makes me think how the concept of local can be changed by its inhabitants: to me, hostas and aucuba are as much a part of Lansdowne as rhododendrons and sycamores, present as they are in the gardens we inherited from the late Victorians who built it.
Flipping the Paradigm: Landscapes That Welcome Wildlife
Douglas Tallamy argues that natives are necessary to maintain diversity because so much wildlife has evolved specifically to use these plants. I wish he had more examples than just the monarch, but he has a lot of cute pictures of birds, so I forgive him.
Managing Soil Health
Elaine Ingham explains what we actually mean when we talk about roots needing to breathe. They don’t actually; it’s the bacteria and fungi that thrive in aerobic environments that we want to cultivate and the anaerobic ones we want to avoid.
Actinobacteria help to form humus (and most antibiotics we use) but release compounds that brassicas like but may harm others. They can be identified by a before-the-rain smell.
Anaerobes produce very acidic waste, which is why bogs are acidic.
Bacteria are better at decomposing simple molecules, while fungi are better at complex (lignin, cellulose, humus). Bacteria thrive in nitrogen-rich environments.
Clear, narrow hyphae tend to be disease fungi, while colored, thick hyphae tend to be beneficial. Mycorrhizal fungi are harmful to brassicas.
Annuals need more nitrate (NH4) than ammonium (NO3); perennials the opposite. All starts as ammonium produced from air (N2) by nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but aerobic nitrifying bacteria can convert it to nitrate. If the soil is dominated by fungi, it remains ammonium. In anaerobic conditions (compacted soil), denitrifying bacteria convert ammonium and nitrate back to gases and create acid rain.
Weeds like 10:1 ratio of bacteria biomass to fungal, while veggies like 3-4:1-2 and forests 100-1000:1.
Anaerobic soil organisms produce acid, alcohol, formaldehyde, phenolic compounds, which are toxic to most plants other than ones adapted to wetlands.
February 27, 2022
I had high expectations for this book. Unfortunately, it missed the mark. There were approximately a dozen different contributors, of which I only found several to be worth the read. The other chapters were either poorly written or presented viewpoints that were in direct conflict with the central theme of sustainability. For instance, Rick Darke argues that the negative impacts of invasive plants are often overstated. Spoken like a man who does not spend a lot of time out in nature.
The chapter from Doug Talamy was probably the most informative of all. He makes his case for planting native plants much more concisely and eloquently than in any of his other books that I have read. Probably because he was limited to one chapter.
If you are a horticulture professional interested in sustainability, this may be worth a read. If you are a gardener looking for more information on sustainability, look elsewhere.
The chapter from Doug Talamy was probably the most informative of all. He makes his case for planting native plants much more concisely and eloquently than in any of his other books that I have read. Probably because he was limited to one chapter.
If you are a horticulture professional interested in sustainability, this may be worth a read. If you are a gardener looking for more information on sustainability, look elsewhere.
August 31, 2017
Essays by Rick Darke, Eric Tonsmeier, Toby Hemenway, Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, et al., on permaculture, natives vs. non-natives, managing soil health, waterwise gardens, green roofs, gardening for wildlife, meadow gardens, the Sustainable Sites Initiative, the sustainable edible garden, climate change gardening, and while system garden design. Uneven but useful. The chapters on soil (surprisingly), wildlife gardening, and the discussions among several essays on natives vs. exotics were most useful for me.
March 27, 2013
This was an interesting compendium of landscaping topics from leading experts in sustainable gardening. I would recommend it as a starting point for information. In some cases, way too much information on soil composition for the beginner sustainable gardener, but all in all, helpful. As a confirmed composter, and former student of Connecticut College's William Niering, I am seriously pondering using the back yard as a trial meadow ending into the woods.
April 21, 2011
You will just have to read Library Journal to find out.
June 28, 2012
By a variety of authors, written in sections concerning the ecological need for diversity and sustainability in gardening. Terrific read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews