posted 5 months ago
I give this book 10 out of 10 acorns.
It is my very favorite Permaculture book, and the second one I ever read (because "Food Not Lawns" was the first one I read, and Hemenway wrote the foreword to that one!). There is a lovely dynamic to this book: Permaculture is a non-linear, interconnected web of principles and actions, although a book has to work sequentially. I love how Hemenway was able to present the information sequentially in the chapters, and yet be ever building on them throughout the book, so that it was like a web of information and ideas at the same time. I have not had quite the same experience with the organization and flow with other Permaculture books, and it is why I am constantly pulling it off my shelves just to enjoy it, besides look up information.
I have the second edition, and appreciate the section devoted to urban gardens, which is my scenario. Hemenway was a reader as well as a writer, and you can tell this by his literary sense of humor and his almost poetic prose. I appreciated his warmth, knowledge, hope, and idealism on every page of every chapter. I felt like he understood the way to see things, the way I wish to see things, and I will refer to this great book all my life.
“If we are honest, we can still love what we are, we can find all the good there is to find, and we may find ways to enhance that good, and to find a new kind of living world which is appropriate for our time.” ― Christopher Alexander