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

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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. 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. 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.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. 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. 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.

Fowler suggests that it is far less time consuming to garden alongside nature rather than being a chore that includes constant weeding and back-breaking digging. 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. It suggests building a garden out of three components, "basics" (perennials), "fillers" (self-seeders that look after themselves) and "toppings" (more labour-intensive annuals).

Interesting and well written, but a huge disappointment after Alys's previous book, The Edible Garden.Her approach, which she describes as a polyculture, hinges upon ‘a good backbone of perennial edibles’ that can be relied on year after year to produce a healthy harvest, alongside a complement of annual plants that you can sow and grow to suit your tastes as well as your capacity.

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. If the initial age verification is unsuccessful, we will contact you asking you to provide further information to prove that you are aged 18 or over. informative and interesting too, i learnt a lot and the idea of polyculture gardens has my brain buzzing.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. She has keen interest in agriculture and food politics and is setting up an urban farm in Birmingham. 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.

Through anecdotal advice, you will learn how to raise and nurture your plants; from trees and shrubs to bulbs and climbers, Fowler covers everything from where to plant them, how to feed the soil and when they should be harvested. Alys Fowler trained at the Horticultural Society, the New York Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. 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.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. 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. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.