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Resilient Garden: Sustainable Gardening for a Changing Climate
Create a beautiful, climate-resilient, sustainable garden that will take your outdoor space into the future.
As we live with an increasingly changing climate, summer droughts, winter waterlogging, high winds, erratic frosts and frequent pests are challenges that all gardeners face. This forward-thinking book – grounded in the latest RHS research – shows you how to work with the environment and adapt your outdoor space to give it exactly what it needs to flourish… and to give wildlife a helping hand, too.
Award-winning garden designer Tom Massey shares essential tips on how to analyze your garden looking at everything from soil type to sun exposure, before recommending practical projects and plant choices that will be perfect for your plot. Discover how a hedge can reduce noise and trap pollution, how a patio affects waterlogging, how to harvest your rainwater, and much more.
Inside the pages of this horticultural handbook, you can expect to
- Many innovative ideas on how readers can make small changes to their plot that will benefit biodiversity and reduce the impacts of climate change in their local area.
- Top tips on how to select the right plants for your pitch, from trees and shrubs to grasses and climbers.
- Fascinating case studies of intelligent, sustainable garden designs from around the world.
- A chapter on sustainable materials and planting mediums.
- Diagrams and infographics to illustrate key concepts, and photographs to show beautiful plantings and designs.
This gardening guide enables readers worldwide to analyze the needs of their plot, looking at wind, sun, soil, water, wildlife, air quality, and carbon, and will only become more relevant as gardeners worldwide experience changes in weather and want to adapt their outdoor space so that it will continue to flourish.
Together we can garden more sustainably, mitigate extreme weather conditions and ensure our outdoor spaces remain resilient, beautiful, inspiring places to enjoy for years to come.
As we live with an increasingly changing climate, summer droughts, winter waterlogging, high winds, erratic frosts and frequent pests are challenges that all gardeners face. This forward-thinking book – grounded in the latest RHS research – shows you how to work with the environment and adapt your outdoor space to give it exactly what it needs to flourish… and to give wildlife a helping hand, too.
Award-winning garden designer Tom Massey shares essential tips on how to analyze your garden looking at everything from soil type to sun exposure, before recommending practical projects and plant choices that will be perfect for your plot. Discover how a hedge can reduce noise and trap pollution, how a patio affects waterlogging, how to harvest your rainwater, and much more.
Inside the pages of this horticultural handbook, you can expect to
- Many innovative ideas on how readers can make small changes to their plot that will benefit biodiversity and reduce the impacts of climate change in their local area.
- Top tips on how to select the right plants for your pitch, from trees and shrubs to grasses and climbers.
- Fascinating case studies of intelligent, sustainable garden designs from around the world.
- A chapter on sustainable materials and planting mediums.
- Diagrams and infographics to illustrate key concepts, and photographs to show beautiful plantings and designs.
This gardening guide enables readers worldwide to analyze the needs of their plot, looking at wind, sun, soil, water, wildlife, air quality, and carbon, and will only become more relevant as gardeners worldwide experience changes in weather and want to adapt their outdoor space so that it will continue to flourish.
Together we can garden more sustainably, mitigate extreme weather conditions and ensure our outdoor spaces remain resilient, beautiful, inspiring places to enjoy for years to come.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published April 4, 2023
12 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 13, 2025
Now I just need a plot of land
April 16, 2023
The realities of climate change are sobering and heartbreaking; this book helped me feel inspired for things I can do in my own garden that not only make a difference, but that invite and celebrate a connection with nature to each of us.
In the last year I’ve read a lot of sustainable gardening books, and what I loved about this book is how wholistic it is—it addresses so much more than water-conservation and plant recommendations. I learned a lot about thinking more broadly about climate crisis—how we can answer the global loss of diversity by creating biodiverse climates that support birds, insects and wildlife in our own backyards. How we can choose planting combinations that increase our garden's resilience to changing weather. In my local neighborhood I’m seeing a lot of people tear out turf and replace it with rock, but Massey really makes it clear how important trees and plant life are--both for the connection to nature it gives us and the habitat it creates for an ever growing number of endangered or disappearing wildlife species, but also for the crucial function of capturing Co2 from the atmosphere. Massey also wants us to think about the carbon footprint of your garden--what materials are you using? How are they made and where are they from? How can you reuse what you have? I loved the concept he teaches too, like "brownfield gardening", Hugel mounds, composting, and thinking creatively to turn construction / garden waste into areas for biodiversity that are both beautiful and good for the balance of our ecosystems.
The virtual reality experience is SO COOL. I used our VR headset and have spent several sessions "in" the garden taking note of all the details and just enjoying the beautiful space. It really inspired me!
In the last year I’ve read a lot of sustainable gardening books, and what I loved about this book is how wholistic it is—it addresses so much more than water-conservation and plant recommendations. I learned a lot about thinking more broadly about climate crisis—how we can answer the global loss of diversity by creating biodiverse climates that support birds, insects and wildlife in our own backyards. How we can choose planting combinations that increase our garden's resilience to changing weather. In my local neighborhood I’m seeing a lot of people tear out turf and replace it with rock, but Massey really makes it clear how important trees and plant life are--both for the connection to nature it gives us and the habitat it creates for an ever growing number of endangered or disappearing wildlife species, but also for the crucial function of capturing Co2 from the atmosphere. Massey also wants us to think about the carbon footprint of your garden--what materials are you using? How are they made and where are they from? How can you reuse what you have? I loved the concept he teaches too, like "brownfield gardening", Hugel mounds, composting, and thinking creatively to turn construction / garden waste into areas for biodiversity that are both beautiful and good for the balance of our ecosystems.
The virtual reality experience is SO COOL. I used our VR headset and have spent several sessions "in" the garden taking note of all the details and just enjoying the beautiful space. It really inspired me!
January 26, 2025
very informative and thorough - multiple contributors/experts - and goes into detail with one case study of a rewilded garden. for newbies to gardening I would recommend Planting for Honeybees: The Grower's Guide to Creating a Buzz or Planting for Wildlife: A Grower’s Guide to Rewilding Your Garden before this. lots of tips for which plants to choose and why. very UK focused, but easily translateable to most of europe. I found myself a bit disappointed by the sections discussing materials to use in the garden, highlighting materials from the other side of the world - with little to no mention of the carbon footprint of transporting that material to the UK.
resilient gardening is a combined non-fiction informative text opening up for further discussion and a guide for rewilding a garden, but I'd say this one is better suited for somebody who's already familiar with gardening.
at the back of the book there is a glossary, an index, and cited sources. also acknowledgements and further reading
resilient gardening is a combined non-fiction informative text opening up for further discussion and a guide for rewilding a garden, but I'd say this one is better suited for somebody who's already familiar with gardening.
at the back of the book there is a glossary, an index, and cited sources. also acknowledgements and further reading
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews