I've been meaning to read a beginning permaculture book or two, just to make sure I haven't missed any of the fundamentals through my hit or miss learning approach.  But skimming through all of the information in a beginner book in search of a few gems annoys me, so I put the task off.

Last week, though, I learned that one of the perks of signing on with a print publisher is that they'll send you free copies of their books to review even before they're released.  Sign me up!  The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture by Nicole Faires sounded like it might fill that (potential) gap in my permaculture knowlege-base quite well, so I spent all weekend drifting through the text's pretty pictures.

The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture is geared toward beginners, and I think it would do a fine job of opening the eyes of someone who might have heard the word "permaculture" once or twice but who knows little else.  I can't really compare it to the big two in that category (Hemenway's Gaia's Garden and Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual) since I only skimmed the classics a few years ago, but I suspect Faires' book is written on a more basic level than both, is more enjoyable to read than Mollison's book, and has more of a textbook style than Gaia's Garden.  (What I'm trying to say here is that The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture is written on a sixth grade level, which drives me nuts, but is a style that clearly is preferred by the majority of magazine-reading Americans.)

I also have several bones to pick with the information presented in The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture, but upon further reflection, I decided that my nitpicks are more about permaculture as a movement than about this book in particular.  For example, while it sounds good to say that edges promote biodiversity and that you should make all of your garden beds wavy-edged for that reason, my experience has shown that straight lines are much easier to maintain.  I think that all of the disagreements I have with permaculture ideals like this stem from the lack of hands-on experience of many permaculture philosophers.

Which is all a long way of saying --- I recommend you give this book to your neighbor or mother if they look at you in confusion when you say the word "permaculture".  Nicole Faires goes out of her way to keep the book mainstream, her goal being to launch permaculture beyond the "hippies and hipsters" who she thinks often advocate permaculture in a manner that turns off the suburban housewife and traditional farmer.

I'd recommend that my regular readers check this book out of the library.  I got two or three good ideas from the book and thoroughly enjoyed the refresher course on permaculture zones.

But it's not staying on my bookshelf...which is your gain!  Leave a comment on this post today, and I'll select one lucky winner tomorrow to receive The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture in the mail next week.  Hopefully you'll find it just the right home!

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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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