Eco and Gardening Books and Resources
SquareFootGardening.org – Learn about the SFG method, gardening initiatives, how to find a Certified Gardening Instructor, and more.
A Short Video explaining the Square Foot Gardening Method
Search here to connect with a SFG Certified Instructor in your area.
Veganic Farming and Gardening – A list of resources and a three-hour video featuring a workshop by Will Bonsall, author of Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical Self-Reliant Gardening.
Guerilla Gardening Ted Talk – Ron Finley plants gardens in South Central Los Angeles. Learn about his alternative version of fast-food, and how he is making a healthy impact in his food-desert community.
American Community Gardening Association – This website provides a wide range of gardening resources and a map of existing gardens by location.
Kids Gardening Foundation – Get involved with the School Garden Movement, which creates opportunities for kids to learn through gardening.
“Why Buy Local Food?” – This article discusses the benefits of eating local food on your health and the environment and why it’s important.
National Farmers Market Week – This proclamation shows the $9 billion annually added to the economy by farmers markets.
Organic Trade Association – The OTA provides the latest data on everything related to the organic food industry.
Why Grow and Eat Organic – This article explains the benefits of growing your own organic fruits and vegetables.
“GMO Dangers: Facts You Need to Know” – The T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies 2015 Article on GMOs.
KISS THE GROUND - Written By “Kiss the Ground” documentary filmmaker Josh Tickell, this book focuses on how the food you eat can reverse climate change, heal your body, and ultimately save our world.
The Call of the Reed Warbler - In Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health.
Braiding Sweetgrass - Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how other living beings – asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass – offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. The awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Farming While Black - This book by Leah Penniman is the first comprehensive “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture.
Grass, Soil, Hope - This book by Courtney White tackles an increasingly crucial question: What can we do about the seemingly intractable challenges confronting all of humanity today, including climate change, global hunger, water scarcity, environmental stress, and economic instability
Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture By Gabe Brown - As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture.
Cows Save the Planet - By Judith D. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems--climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity –there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.
Water in Plain Sight By Judith D. Schwartz - By allying with the water cycle, we can revive lush, productive landscapes, like the river in rural Zimbabwe that now flows miles further than it has in living memory thanks to restorative grazing; the fruit-filled food forest in Tucson, Arizona grown by harvesting urban wastewater; or the mini-oasis in West Texas nourished by dew.
Mycelium Running - By Paul Stamets, this manual outlines the mycological rescue of the planet.
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations By David Montgomery - Dirt, soil, call it what you want--it’s everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it’s no laughing matter.
Growing a Revolution By David Montgomery -This book draws on visits to farms in the industrialized world and developing world to show that a new combination of farming practices can deliver innovative, cost-effective solutions to problems farmers face today.
The Hidden Half of Nature By David Montgomery and Anne Biklé - From garden to gut, they show why cultivating beneficial microbiomes holds the key to transforming agriculture and medicine.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming By Paul Hawken - In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change.
The Carbon Farming Solution By Eric Toensmeier - A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security. With carbon farming, agriculture ceases to be part of the climate problem and becomes a critical part of the solution.
The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet By Kristin Ohlsen - An elegantly argued, passionate case for “our great green hope”--a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon--and potentially reverse global warming.
Tending the Wild By M Kat Anderson - Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California’s natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.
Farmacology: Total Health from the Ground Up By Daphne Miller, MD - Bridging the traditional divide between agriculture and medicine, Miller shares lessons learned from inspiring farmers and biomedical researchers and artfully weaves their insights and discoveries, along with stories from her patients, into the narrative.
Restoration Agriculture By Mark Shepard - Every single human society that has relied on annual crops for staple foods has collapsed. Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel, and many other needs - in your own backyard, farm, or ranch.
The Ecology of Care By Didi Pershouse - The Ecology of Care unfolds a surprising new take on the story of our time: how the germ theory of disease joined with a profit-based economy and unwittingly led to a “sterilization” of medicine, agriculture, and even our social lives. This 150-year detour has brought about the near destruction of our climate as well as a great forgetting of the power of connection.
One-Straw Revolution By Masanobu Fukuoka - Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural practice, deciding instead that the best forms of cultivation mirror nature’s own laws. Over the next three decades, he perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort.
Permaculture, Designer’s Handbook By Bill Mollison - Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture By Toby Hemenway - Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening--which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants--can take place only on a large, multi acre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it’s fun and easy to create a “backyard ecosystem” By assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions.
Holistic Management Handbook By Jody Butterfield, Sam Bingham, and Allan Savory - Holistic management is a systems-thinking approach developed By biologist Allan Savory to restore the world’s grassland soils and minimize the damaging effects of climate change and desertification on humans and the natural world.
Rodale’s Basic Organic Gardening: A Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden By Deborah L Martin - When the inspiration hits to start an organic garden, many novices could benefit from a guidebook that speaks directly to their enthusiasm, their goals, and, of course, their need for solid information that speaks a newbie’s language--from the most trusted source for organic gardening methods.
The Rodale Book of Composting: Easy Methods for Every Gardener By Grace Gershuny and Deborah L. Martin - An essential guide to composting for all gardeners and environmentally conscious people. This revised edition of The Rodale Book of Composting includes all the latest in new techniques, technology, and equipment.
Holistic Management, Third Edition: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment By Allan Savory and Jody Butterfiield - Fossil fuels and livestock grazing are often targeted as major culprits behind climate change and desertification. But Allan Savory, cofounder of the Savory Institute, begs to differ. The bigger problem, he warns, is our mismanagement of resources.
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