Paradise Lot
Paradise
Lot is Eric
Toensmeier's tale of how he tested the hypotheses he and Dave Jacke set
forth in Edible
Forest Gardens.
Toensmeier and his friend Jonathan Bates bought a duplex with a tenth
of an acre backyard in Holyoke Massachusetts (zone 6) in January 2004,
spent a year learning the site and planning out their forest garden,
then they dove in and made it happen. By 2009, salamanders,
fungi, and other wild creatures had shown up in what used to be a
compacted urban lot, Toensmeier and Bates had both attracted mates, and
all four of them were happily grazing on the bounty produced by their
forest garden.
Unlike Toensmeier's
other books, Paradise
Lot is fun, easy
to read, and inspiring. (Don't get me wrong, I think Perennial
Vegetables and Edible
Forest Gardens
are seminal works, but neither is something you'd read entirely for
fun, while Paradise
Lot is.)
This week, I'm going to include a few highlights in a
slightly-truncated lunchtime series, but I recommend you check out Paradise
Lot yourself to
while away a winter afternoon. Maybe you'll end up having an
epiphany and decide to try out something crazy this year, like raising
silkworms for chickens.
Or maybe you'll simply enjoy reading the first book I've seen profiling
the growing pains of an actual North American forest garden. Just
be aware that you'll need to keep a handle on your wallet because
you'll want to try out several new species by the time the book is done.
| This post is part of our Paradise Lot lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I'm just catching up on some of your book reviews. You'll be pleased to know you convinced me to add this one to my Christmas wish list! I was a little concerned that it might be a bit cold-climate-specific for my situation, but I now think the general principles will translate just fine and I can substitute appropriate species where necessary.
I was specifically looking for something more practical and based on one person's experience in their own garden. I have a lot of permaculture theory books, but I often wonder how many of the suggestions have actually been tried by the authors. I also feel that some of them move around between consulting gigs, and don't really stick around to see how their plans work out over time. Or they have an army of volunteers to do all the manual labour while attending PDCs or woofing, so their systems don't need to be manageable by a single family.
Thanks!