Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Back Yards

by Sara Bonnett Stein

Noah's Garden shows us how the landscape style of neat yards and gardens has devastated suburban ecology. It kills entire communities of plants and animals by stripping bare their habitats and destroying their food supplies. Her book interweaves an account of her efforts to change her methods with an explanation of the ecology of gardens.

Genres: Gardening, Nature, Nonfiction, Science, Environment, Ecology, Plants

294 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 1993

About the author

Sara Bonnett Stein wrote books for children, some on sensitive subjects, such as divorce and death. She was also involved in toy design and native plant gardening, and wrote on ecology.

Reviews

[J. Wootton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The day is not far off when we will be forced to admit that suburbs are bad for us.

Its symptoms are varied, but the root problem can be stated simply: suburbia encourages connections neither with our neighbors, nor with the land. Ecology is sterilized by permanent real-estate-listing-style landscapes; community is sterilized by automatic garage-door openers; time, energy, daylight, and resources are wasted on long commutes; genuine interaction is discarded in favor of inarticulate posturings, silent aesthetic consensus, and denial.

I could sum up, and thereby dismiss, Noah's Garden with brief sentences. I could say it's about the advantages of native-plant gardening. I could say it exposes the divorce between high-maintenance horticultural gardening and the needs of local ecosystems. I could say it chronicles the author's journey of exploration and conversion from "traditional" gardener to backyard conservationist, conveying a staggering - and wonderful - amount of ecological knowledge along the way; but I would not be doing Sara Stein's book justice.

In Noah's Garden, Stein has given us nothing less than a blueprint for the redemption of the suburbs. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough to anyone who is caretaker of "a bit of earth."

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about planting native plants and designing landscapes so as to attract and sustain wildlife.

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UPDATED May 2014

I find that I need to re-read this book every so often. It speaks to me in a way that I can't quite articulate. I love puttering in my garden - and though I certainly don't hew to an all native plant palette, I do try to plant natives, and plant fruiting shrubs that the birds will like (and the deer won't). Here's a quote:

"I want us as a culture to depart from the old tradition of evaluating land according to what can be extracted from it as commodity or abstracted from it as social asset and turn instead toward a new tradition of valuing land by the life it harbors."

Not only does that speak to the issue of lawn/no lawn, and other issues in designing & cultivating a little suburban plot, it sweeps the bigger issues under the same umbrella - fracking, strip mining, poisoned waterways. We need to treat the earth better - in small ways and in big ones.

My introduction to Sara Stein was her obituary, in the New York Times in 2005. It was shortly after we'd bought our house, and the obit stood out - not only was it headlined "Garden Advocate for Use of Native Plants", but it turned out that she lived not far from us. I'm sorry not to have met her, but grateful that she lives on via her book. It's become talismanic for me. Re-read every couple of years, absorb, think, and plant cornus racimosa and nurture the chokecherry tree.

[Stephen Kiernan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book changed how I landscape around my home. Less work, more pleasure, more birds, more variety.

[TheAccidental Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a kid, I would slow down toward the end of a book, because I just did not want to finish. That's what happened with Noah's Garden. It's so much more than a book about nature, or any kind of a "gardening" book. I got to feel that I KNEW Sara Stein. I started to want to send her a Twitter and see if I could wrangle an invitation so that she would show me around her meadows, her pond, her blueberries.

But no. The book is "old" and she is long gone. The book is timeless, though, and so is she. I read this book at the same time as I was devouring Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home and Isabella Tree's Rewilding. I recommend you to read these three books, just like that, all together. They each provide the structure for the other, filling in the gaps and leaving the reader with a super strong commitment to changing the planting structure of our biospaces.

You guys read the book. I'm going to go and plant a willow tree and see if I can feed the insects and contribute ecologically to the land upon which I live and for which I am responsible.

[Missy LeBlanc Ivey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Month of July 2022: Ecology - con't

This is book one of two. I would suggest you read book two first. It is much better and can be read as a stand-alone. The first half of this book was good and encouraging; the second half fell completely flat for me….botanical names overload throw-down and just too much rambling on and on...pretty much the way I write. Ha! Still, I took away some good things worth noting from this book.

For instance, wild plant seeds are already in your soil, whether you put them there or not. They may lay dormant for years and years, even hundreds of years, then suddenly, when conditions are just right, or you have turned over some dirt and brought these seeds to the surface, these weed seeds may sprout…one reason to not till a garden each year. Just fluff it with a pitch fork and keep a heavy layer of mulch at all times, and pick the occasional weed that busts through.

With this fact in mind, I’m reminded of the year, 2015, when a strange weed popped up inside the chicken yard, tall and beautiful, one we had never seen it before. I later learned it was dog fennel. It showed up for just that one summer and then was gone. In 2017, the chicken yard once again came alive with smart weed, literally covering the entire yard with the most beautiful pink flowers I had ever seen. We have lived in this place since 2004 and have never seen these things before, and have never seen it again since. Besides the two instances above, the chicken yard stays bare…nothing but dirt and chicken poop.

The other thing that I found fascinating to read about was how nature comes and goes in cycles. Coyotes may be in great numbers one year because their food source is up in a particular area. Once they eat up that source, which will have grown in numbers in another area, they will leave and find another place of abundance. But, they’ll be back in a few years as the source has an opportunity to reestablish itself. A boom and bust wildlife cycle!

The author encourages more than just conservation. She wants you to make the extra effort to restore your little piece of property to support the wildlife in your area, which I would LOVE to do. She’s very fortunate to have a husband who loves to work along side her to create their natural landscape. It is a lot of work for just one person. But, I could probably start very small, and I mean very small, like...plant a plant! Ha!

She suggests to plant "native" plants to attract all sorts of insects, birds and animals (preys and predators) and let nature control the environment naturally. Even natural pesticides don’t differentiate between good and bad insects, and you can definitely mess up a cycle. But, in the same breath, she seems to be using herbicides in particular cases for weeds…a little confusing.

Still, if you want to get motivated in restoring your property back to native plants that are meant for and survive in your area, and with plants that truly attract butterflies and birds, then these two books are a must read for encouragement, if anything. I’m still not too fond of her writing style.

END OF REVIEW!

Below are just my own ramblings…of thoughts that popped up in my head as I was reading and of things I read that I would like to remember.

To determine where you can start on your native landscape design, consider these things: How much of your yard do you actually use, and how much can you return to nature, to its natural inhabitants? What paths do you regularly use? I walk to my garden “area”. I walk to the burn pit. I walk to the coop. I walk to the shop.

As far as the front yard goes, I walk to the mailbox. Otherwise, I sit on the front porch swing. That’s where I have the huge live oaks with shade and birds and squirrels, but strangely, never any lizards.

At times, we play games on the side yard with the grandies. This is all on the front 5 acres. These paths could be edged with thickets, flowery grassy meadows, a small water pond with a man-made wetland area…which wouldn’t be hard to establish in one of our low spots, and connect the paths with hedgerows. Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream!

The back 5? Nothing! We mow it about twice a year. There’s nothing but ugly burdock growing back there. A place for field rats and snakes to hide out. I’m not very happy that we wasted it by not doing something with it after all these years.

Forget about plants YOU want, and begin to think about plants that other animals, birds or insects need. Three things to keep in mind and incorporate into landscape when designing a native scape and can be done very effectively on as little as 1/16th of an acre: woodland, wetland, and grassland.

EXAMPLES:

• WOODLAND
- variety of native trees

• WETLAND
- skunk cabbage (carrion flies feed off skunk cabbage nectar, and bluebirds will feed off carrion flies)

• GRASSLAND
- Trumpet vine (hummingbirds love them and feed from the cone flowers during hot parts of summer. LET THEM GROW
- Mullein - hummingbirds line their nests with the soft velvety leaves
- Bluebonnets (feed early insects in April)
- Texas bluebells (feed early insects in April)
- Clover (feed early insects in April) and are nitrogen fixers
- Wild geraniums (May bloomers)
- Wood asters (forest edges-fall bloomers)
- Evening primrose (opens petals at night for the nocturnal moth)
- Wild roses (forest edges- mockingbirds depend on these fruits through winter)
- Muscadines
- Virginia creepers under oak trees (flash fall colors, alerting birds to fall berries for winter migration) NOTE: I currently have wedelia daisy, non-native, invasive, yet I planted a few years back because I knew it would be successful with little or no work at all...AND IT IS!

Wild animals (prey and predators) come and go in cycles…a boom and bust cycle. Years ago, when we first moved here, we saw wild hogs tearing up our back five, but then they left and we never saw them again. Maybe they were passing through. Our area must not provide them with enough of the foods they eat. Thank you, Jesus!

Wild coyotes come and go. Very seldom, but some nights we can hear them going nuts, which is totally awesome. I have one of those nights recorded on my phone. One evening, during daylight, I even saw a coyote walk up behind the coop where our chickens were out and scavenging. He grabbed one and cantered off into the woods. Other than a few instances, we hardly ever see them around.

2014 was year of the banana spiders. Their webs completely covered the forest line. I have never seen anything like it before. That was the year I was mowing, trying to be careful around the woods so I wouldn’t run into one….but I did anyway. I let loose of our zero-turn mower, slapped the cap off my head and mowed over it. It was completely mangled, so I played a joke on my husband. I put on the most shocked look I could muster up and walked into the house a little dazed, holding up the mangled hat. He took a good look at me and, and with total concern for me, asked, “What the hell happened? Where’s the mower? In a ditch?” Ha!

The one constant we will see is the ebb and flow of crazy ass rat snakes in the coop looking to steal some eggs. One particular year, 2017, I walked in to take care of business, and behind my back, and up above the rafters and hiding out in a nest were four rat snakes slithering around. That was just one day, which was a big year for rat snakes. My husband is the most awesome snake wrangler! I couldn’t have chickens without a wrangler. He catches the snakes; I catch the pictures.

Then one year there were mice everywhere, but no snakes. Mice in the attic, baby mice under the hood of my car, mice nest in the tractor. They even chewed threw the wires of the tractor ($$). We had mice (and field rats) running around in the coop. That was the biggest year of mice we have ever seen around here. But then the snakes came back. We even found a snake in the house. But, that was all “HIS” fault! I told my husband he better fix that rubber strip underneath the door before a snake gets in here. I actually told (a.k.a. nagged) him for about 6 months until he finally changed it out. That snake actually bit him…m-hmmm! I really hate to say things like, “I told you so.”

This year, spring 2022, we’ve already removed two huge snakes from the coop (catch and release…somewhere else special…ha). They got 9 of our baby chicks. Then, one evening, a few weeks later, we were sitting on the couch talking, and what did I see? A huge rat snake crawling up our living room window. WTH? Summer 2022 is promising to be a big year with snakes.

Spring 2022…this year - We had martins galore flying around our property for the first time ever since we’ve been here, 2004. Was this because it is the first spring that our county didn’t spray for mosquitoes from the sky? And because my husband hadn’t mowed yet? After he mowed the back five down, the birds disappeared.

Spring 2022…this year - Barklice webs appeared for the first time ever on one of my oak trees. It covered huge limbs with a white web, really thick in some places, mainly around the tops and joints of limbs. Why haven’t I ever seen these before this year? Could it also be for the fact that our county didn’t hire the plane to spray the air for mosquitos this year? Barklice are beneficial. They clean tree bark of fungi and dead rotten wood. They hung around for a month or two, then disappeared. By the end of June, they were gone to find another food source.

Summer 2022...this year - First year to see a few real grasshopper locusts, but lots of those huge green small-winged grasshoppers. The author notes on page 245 that when her grasshoppers returned, so did the meadowlarks to eat the grasshoppers. (Identify meadowlarks, if any. Do mockingbirds eat grasshoppers? I hope so because I’ve seen a larger number than usual hanging out here on Hoo Hoo Acres.

OTHER INTERESTING TIDBITS OF INFO

Plants and trees are filled with their own plant juices of fungicides, bactericides, miticides and vermicides that protect them against a wide spectrum of insects. They have a mix of poisons they regulate as needed. An oak tree, once bitten and severely hurt by a leaf-eating pest, will withdraw nutrients from its leaves and pump up its production of toxic tannins. Injuries to plants or trees have chemical effects. (p. 110-111) We have bred these toxic defenses right out of a lot of wild plants and garden cultivated crops. They may be more palatable today, but we have to work harder to protect them.

Ladybugs only lay their eggs on already aphid infested plants, including roses. These aphids will be the only food source for the ladybug larvae until it develops wings and flies away.

Clovers break apart fixed nitrogen in soil, which allows plant roots (even grasses) to absorb it. Nitrogen have two atoms so tightly stuck together that plants can’t use it at all to make protein unless they are broken apart. As the clover sprouts and grows, it is provided with a large amount of nitrates to feed its bacteria multiplying deep in its roots. All that nitrogen is released as the plant dies off. So, having clovers in your lawn at springtime is actually a great thing. Plus, there is nothing prettier than a lawn full of spring clovers. (p. 124)

Ants and aphids - I always see trails of ants climbing my okra stalks, and now I know why. I thought they were trying to kill my flowers by sucking up all their moisture or something. But, nope! I also noticed that I see quite a few aphids on some plants each year as well. The ants are headed up the stalk to massage the aphids ass to help them release that good sugary stuff from their butts that they love so much. Ha! But, it is still good to disrupt their little orgie because these ants are guarding these aphids, which reproduce and multiply more rapidly than any unguarded ants. (p. 108)

Ants are actually very beneficial and not just good for rubbing the hinies of aphids. They will attack crop eating caterpillars and leaf-chewing beetles. That’s great, but, around here, ant beds seem to form around the roots of my young trees and in my garden beds, especially after a lot of heavy rains. Is that harmful? According to this author, she puts ants right up there with earthworms. Both cultivate the soil by tunneling through all that heavy dirt. This allows water and oxygen to reach the plants at the roots. (p. 125)

Earthworms - One particular English earthworm that has been Americanized, the Eisenia fetida, is very prolific at composting human feces into potting soil. Unfortunately, it is only sold in Australia. This potting soil contains 3% available nitrogen. Soil (or even feces) that transits through an earthworms body has a thousand times more decayer bacteria than in surrounding soil, 5 times more nitrogen, 7 times more phosphorous and 11 times more potassium. (p. 134*, *”Earthworms: their ecology and relationships with soils and land use” by Kenneth Ernest (1985))

Weeds - When weeding, throw your weeds back into the garden. The roots have siphoned up all the nutrition, different nutrition at different levels, and as they decay, will disperse those nutrients back onto the top of the ground where they lay. And when the rains come, the nutrients sill sink into the soil feeding and giving life to microbes a little further down, and so on and so on.

Grasses - There are only two categories of species of all plants: cool season (C3) or warm season (C4). Cool season grasses (or plants…like clover) can’t handle the heat. They end up taking in too much oxygen, over carbon dioxide, and suffocate themselves. You will know what you have when your grass (or plants) die during the hot, droughts of summer. My lawn, as most others around here, is St. Augustine grass….obviously a cool season grass. If not watered, eventually it will turn brown and lay dormant until the first rains. Crabgrass, a warm season grass, is from Africa. It grows plentiful around here, especially in my garden. Another grass that is a pain in my ass is the never-die nutgrass. Is it a warm season species? Bermuda grass, also from Africa, is a warm season grass. But, we don’t prefer those grasses, or other native summer grasses (such as little bluestem), that don’t cost Americans billions of dollars each year to maintain. These are even listed by the government as “noxious weeds”. Nope! Most prefer the cool season pretty grass as advertised, and that breaks the bank to keep alive during hot, droughty seasons. The warm season grasses capture carbon dioxide in its tall, thick stems and refuses oxygen in the heat of the summer, allowing it to thrive under pressure.

You can begin anywhere. Now, I want to learn more about grass. Start by determining how many different grasses I have growing here, and naming and finding out if they are native or not. My neighbor’s field had the most beautiful two feet tall grass this spring, when usually he has the most beautiful yellow flowers. Our field has always been chockfull of different marsh grass, thistles, and tall burdocks galore…now pepper vine and kudzu taking over. UGLY!

Monarch butterflies - have to have milkweed to feed and lay their brood during their migrations. Without milkweed, these butterflies will become extinct. Plant milkweed!

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

The author had such a hard time just trying to get a burn permit in the state of New York. She had planned on yearly burnings of small sections at a time of her meadow to nourish and kill weeds so the native seeds and plants would grow, in turn attracting more wildlife.

She made a very valid point regarding the millions of people who keep lawns and the environmentalist who claim to want to restore, conserve and protect nature and our earth. I never would have thought about these things:

“On our meadow’s side of the scale is a single item: a once-every-three-years burn. On the lawn side hang air-polluting mowers, blowers, edgers, thatchers, whackers, and aerators fueled by gasoline; the petrochemicals that make up lawn fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides; the fuel-hungry industrial processes by which these products, the bags and bottles that contain them, and the spreaders and sprayers that distribute them are manufactured. And trucking, too, of course. To that side of the scale must also be added water, both the incredible volume that keeps lawns green and the onus of water pollution caused by chemical runoff. Could one hour of triennial smoke possibly be so heavy?” (p. 170-71)

She and her husband ended up getting their permit, and they burned. Sounds like the same political crap regarding windmills and electric cars, which the cost of both grossly outweigh the benefits.

Timeline - Oddities and memorable moments that have popped up around here on Hoo Hoo Acres since we have lived here (Dec 2004):

2014-07-01 - Banana spider invasion - took over forest line in spring
2015-04-13 - Daddy Long Legs gathering underneath the grandkids playhouse
2015-08-10 – Dog Fennel invasion - took over chicken yard in heat of summer
2016-01-27 - The crawfish takeover
2016 – Mice invasion (babies dropped from under hood of car, chewed through tractor wires, chewed through a stack of plastic gardening cups 16” long…instead of running on top, etc…)
2017-01-21 - The birds
2017-04-28 – Snake invasion (4 snakes at one time found in coop) & many more over the summer
2017-11-19 - Smartweed invasion - took over chicken yard in summer
2017-12-10 – Snow in Texas (not a first, but very rare and memorable)
2021 - Pepper vine invasion - took over hill of elderberry in back five
2022 – HARD winter – most people, including me, lost all their citrus trees down here in SE Texas (unless they were WELL protected…mine were just protected, but not well.
2022 – Martins galore flying all over our property (front and back five) this spring for 1st time ever. NOTE: The county had not sprayed for mosquitoes yet this season.
2022 – Another snake invasion in our forecast? – already early this spring 2 snakes removed from coop and one crawled up our living room window.
2022 – Kudzu invasion - took over pepper vine that took over hill of elderberry in back five
2022-07-09 First gator to ever find our old polluted pond

NOTE: I've posted a few photos on my Goodreads Profile of some of the "firsts" around here at Hoo Hoo Acres.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Less a how-to and more a belle-lettres ode to native habitat gardening. Stein does an excellent job sharing her experiences developing her backyard into a near-mimic of the wild forests of New England, with particular joy to be found in her intellectual explorations, branching from every bird species to ten plants, from every plant to ten insects, from each insect to 10 more insects, and ending up with both a diodiverse back yard and an intimate knowledge of the food webs and seasonal rounds that make it run.

In practical terms, then, what is most helfpul here is to see the steps Stein took. Building from small pieces and following her own whims and synchronicities. and watching her perspective on the greater landscape change as she learns. These are some of the best aspects of natural history, and restoration is perhaps the most in-depth way to learn natural history, since it is practiced daily, not on an annual vacation to a Park or whenever the mood to walk strikes us.

Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens would probably serve as a much better practical introduction, and it supplements Stein's readings well theoretically, too. I've also found Packard's The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook: For Prairies, Savannas, and Woodlands to be the most helpful in practical terms. And the internet.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book to make you ponder on what is happening in your own backyard.

[Trina Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, my, word. I don't know if I have ever read a book that has affected me as this one has. I feel as though a new door has opened, and all the things I have been learning along the paths of my life are about to be put into play.

Sara's writing style is chatty, like we are having a cup of tea while we look over her garden. And then the tour begins. She admits that what she writes is what she sees her garden will be, not always where it is in it's current growth. I really resonate with that.

Thirty one years later, the garden has become all she hoped it would be. Even though she no longer tends the gardens, I just discovered that the current owners have carried on where she left off, and they conduct garden tours of Sara 's gardens. Would that she were here to see it.

[Elaine Burnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stein is a precursor to Doug Tallamy (Bringing Nature Home). She tried traditional gardening but noticed that her plants failed, but the native plants thrived, so she decided to unbecome a gardener. People need to get over their ickiness of bugs and embrace that if you want birds, you have to have native plants that will support native bugs the birds can eat. It’s not all about seeds and fruit. Stein points out the sheer amount of bugs birds need. Seeing this all play out in her yard over the course of many mistakes and, thankfully, corrections clarifies the problem and the solution.

The amount of information she shares, the sheer research she did over the years, and the work she did on her property—both failures and successes—is so impressive. She’s another who died too soon. Thankfully, her property has been saved. Neighbors bought it, determined to maintain it to her standards. It’s become a local celebrity, with tours.

Must read for anyone who controls enough land to have a garden. She wants a revolution, a mass movement toward native plantings and away from manufactured lawn. Then I think a friend who has a chipmunk phobia. Won’t work with everyone. She never mentions climate change, but this was the 1990s; the call is clearer now.

We can’t bemoan the loss of the Amazonian rainforest while Chemlawning our front yards. Dousing your yard with chemicals seemed like a grand idea. What the hell were we thinking? Even Stein promoted glyphosate, aka Roundup, as harmless. Not because she was in cahoots with the chemical company, but because she believed what they said. They lied. Companies lie every day in order to make money.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this title when searching for books that would help me in planting a garden and landscaping my yard using native plants. I was probably suckered by the title which plays to my occasional bouts of megalomania. But in all seriousness, this was a very fulfilling read.

Sara Stein's narrative approach to what could be a dull topic is very engaging and convicting. Although her home and acreage are in New England, it definitely gave me some ideas for here in Michigan...and potentially even for New Mexico some day. I don't expect to ever own a pond in my backyard, but there are certainly other things that I can do to restore the ecology of my own backyard.

Suburbia has created a gaping hole in the landscapes that native flora and fauna need to survive. If we each do our part to restore corridors for these creations, they may survive for the next generations. Sara's stories about the frogs and box turtles that she encountered as a child, but hasn't seen in years are saddening. It makes me wonder if puddles after the August rains in New Mexico still teem with polywogs, or if Jonah will ever be able to catch a garter snake in his backyard. I hope so.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book off the sale table at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

It is a sequel to a previous book that I did not read.

Interesting anecdotes about trying to create gardens that in some ways resemble natural settings.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could only wish for full-color photos of this garden. I wonder what it looks like now, thirty years on.

I borrowed this book (recommended by someone on the Virginia Natives Facebook group) for my son's senior thesis, but I read it for my own inspiration as well. We have five acres full of invasive plants like honeysuckle, autumn olive, and multiflora rose, and I dream of restoring the land to its native glory.

Two takeaways, at least: starting with blueberries as a friendly beginner native, and thinking in terms of mown paths rather than wide-mown lawns. I already knew from my own research before encountering it here that native meadows are not so easy to establish.

Her idea of paths revolutionized my vision.

"Once one begins to think in terms of paths, one realizes that they already exist, although invisibly. One doesn't walk across a lawn every which way, only in the particular ways that get one from place to place. Some of the places are spaces in the human sense of the word-- open areas for sitting, eating, playing. These are the clearings. Others might be spaces in the more usual animal sense of resources that are visited regularly: garbage pail, woodpile, vegetable garden, sandbox.


It's astonishing how little land a family really uses and how much can be left as Lebensraum for others."

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Noah’s Garden’ was one of the early books advocating using native plants and gardening for the wildlife. Stein relates, in wandering fashion, the long process she and her husband undertook of returning a large site to something sustainable and critter friendly- both macro and micro. She shows the problem with having a lawn instead of a meadow, and with planting exotic (non-native plants) to the exclusion of natives. Not having a landscape that provides food and shelter to native insects, birds, and mammals means that pest species numbers just explode with nothing to keep them in check. And that point is where people end up reaching for the spray gun.

It’s a very interesting book for the most part, although it bogs down near the end and I started skimming for a while. There are sources that go into more detail about meadows, pest species, and gardening for wildlife available now, but it’s a nice starting point. Four stars.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with this book isn't the writing, which is enjoyable and engaging, or the intent, which is noble. It's that the author doesn't really believe in her own goal. She doesn't believe that gardens can be a part of the ecosystem. So in the end, it's just another gardening book.

"One can't advise Arizonans to plan their gardens around saguaro cacti that take forty years to reach chest height, insist to Kansans that prairie yards must annually be trampled by bison, sway Californians to the view that canyon fires are ecologically refreshing, or talk a Yankee into entertaining bears. The preservation or restoration of the wilderness is critical but not possible in one's own backyard. One can, however, set aside a portion of this yard to plant, if not altogether naturally, then at least in a way not alien to the theoretical ecosystem in which one lives." p44

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok honestly I didn't finish this, but I felt like I got the gist and was spending too much time reading about New England ecology and the area's specific native plants when I'd rather spend time reading about those for the Southeast (slash those that I might plant myself!) I'm all for rewilding a yard/suburban area, but it seems this book was just ahead of the trends - I've heard of a lot of the main ideas from the book already. The fact that non-native plants (invasive ones, at that) are still sold on shelves at Home Depot truly blows my mind.

The first few chapters, though, totally had me. Happy that she calls out American suburbia for being all wrong about keeping a nice lawn as well! "Nice" lawns are overrated and don't help out our non-human neighbors in any way. I'd like to keep the birds and bugs around, thank you very much.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book. We are losing our insects and birds and this can be changed just from planting the right things in your yard. While she has a large property and could put in a natural pond, she explains how even urban properties can do something to help. I really liked that she tells you how to find out what would be native to your area. Has an index that tells what butterflies and their caterpillars need. I do wish she had the same for moths in the book. Luna moths are dying out and are stunning. So are fireflies and she does bring up their decline and it's causes.

We could do a great deal if even a corner of the yard had certain plants. It adds to interest in the garden, food and shelter for birds and insects, and a great lesson for our children.

[Darcee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting perspective of modern day urban landscaping, and how it neutralizes the environs and chases away all the insects and birds, both good and bad, that keep our living world alive. Author discuss how she altered her own acreage into pods of prairie, woodland, and wetland, to lure back the teeming below the soil and the activity in the skies.
Some good ideas that can be incorporated in anyones yard to an extent, but not something that is practical for everyone in suburbia. Learned some things I did not know that will be useful as well.

[Ellen F · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Douglas Tallamy's excellent "Bringing Nature Home" (2009) about 10 years ago. Sara Stein's "Noah's Garden" (1993) covers some of the same ground, but in an entirely different way. Stein's approach is highly readable, and feels like a friendly neighbor sharing what she's learned about gardening and wildlife. Not a how-to, even though there are lots of suggestions on what to do and how to do it - more of a celebration of how it feels to really immerse oneself in nature on one's own land.

[Belinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noah’s Garden promotes backyard ecology ahead of notable writers such as Tallamy honestly, experientially, and personally. Through Stein’s own successes and failures we learn the how and why of sharing the land with its original inhabitants. The bigger surprise in this book for me was her level of scientific insight as she explained her day to day struggles. Especially enjoyable was her discussion of the competing philosophies of botany, horticulture and ecology. And finally, what gardening should look like.

[Lauren Csaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the content, 4 stars for the writing style—some parts were engrossing, other parts were a little ponderous to get through the language. But an important read that I know I’ll come back to again as I go through my own journey of restoring the ecology of my own back yard in a similar part of the country as Stein’s. Part of me wishes it had been written a little more chronological in her journey—it kind of jumps around a bunch by topic instead of over time. But clearly an important part of the ecology literature, from Sand County Almanac to Bringing Nature Home, and beyond.

[Jonathan Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the book at the beginning...but the style of writing once she moved from big picture to the story of their own land's progress didn't engage me as much. My favorite quote regarding our need to tend our own yards in order to make wildlife possible follows:
"We cannot in fairness rail against those who destroy the rain forest or threaten the spotted owl when we have made our own yards uninhabitable." (p. 19)

[5 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. I agree with everything it is saying about how harmful suburban landscapes are, as they most typically exist today. The first two chapters were engaging, but after that I lost interest. This may be due more to my personal preferences as I generally like more direct communication about things I care about. It felt a bit meandering. Maybe some would see that as conversational and engaging, though. If you care about the environment or have any interest in plants, I would recommend giving this a try.

[x · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great concept, but after the first couple chapters the author stopped introducing new information. I was hoping this would have more depth and new information that we don’t all know already. I was hoping it would be more “how to make positive change by restoring the ecology of our own backyards” and less “please listen to me on how bad everything is!”

[Christie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much. Bought it as inspiration for my new landscaping project (replacing invasive non-native plants with native species to attract birds and pollinators) and found it helpful. Loved the writing style! A pleasure to read.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A first hand restoration of a rural yard. A process of discovery without any easy answers. One of the first proponents of wildlife corridors.

[SusanD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book - should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in birds, gardening, and/or nature and wildlife.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to understand the critical importance of planting natives in your yard, this book is easy to read and inspiring.

[Kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best chapter on importance of reducing lawn: "In Respect of Grass."

"Paths are important" (250) talking about ecological corridors.