When perusing these pages, readers can’t help but recall the words of Midwest landscape architect/gardeners Ossian Cole Simonds (1855–1931) and Jens Jensen (1860–1951) who introduced and advocated the use of native plants in the landscape. Ellen Sousa has furthered their thoughts in this manual on the importance of creating and maintaining grounds that support nature. Tthe principles she cites in her narrative are applicable from forests to seasides and from small lots to farmlands. The author provides tips on the control of pesky critters, unwanted plants, and animals. Heavily illustrated with attractive photographs, the book also includes a directory of the best plants for the region and a map of the plant hardiness zones that assist the gardener in creating an eco-friendly habitat.

— Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden.

The Green Garden

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Written by Debbie at Garden of Possibilities

I’m a huge advocate of gardening in an eco-friendly and sustainable manner. Over the past few years, more and more research has shown how powerful our gardens can be.

The days of simply viewing our gardens as pretty accessories that adorn our homes are waning. Instead, smart gardeners want a green garden — one that supports local wildlife, is a haven for birds, butterflies and bees and is beautiful.

Yes, you can have it all. But, where do you begin?

The First Step

The Green Garden

If you live in New England, I’d suggest buying The Green Garden by Ellen Sousa. The official title of Ellen’s book tells the reader exactly what’s inside…The Green Garden: A New England Guide to Planning, Planting and Maintaining the Eco-Friendly Habitat Garden.

As book titles go, that’s a mouthful, but this book truly delivers on that promise.

Sousa’s open, accessible writing style makes the book seem more like reading a letter from a trusted friend, rather than just a book from some distant author.

She walks readers through the ins & outs of what’s actually happening in your garden, from the importance of healthy soil, to the crucial role insects play to the importance of proper plant selection.

It can be difficult for homeowners who are new to gardening all together, or even those gardeners who are making the transition to habitat gardening, to know where to start. The Green Garden is a one-stop resource that you’ll turn to again and again.

With chapters on designing your habitat garden, choosing plants for your garden, managing and maintaining your habitat garden and even dealing with unwanted wildlife, Sousa covers all the basics and more.

A Few of my Favorite Things

One of my favorite things about The Green Garden is all the lists Sousa provides.  There are lists of plants that grow in clay soil (page 103); plants for urban New England gardens (page 104); plants for coastal gardens with moist soils (page 127) and even a list of plants for a moon garden (page 88).

I also like that Sousa includes a chapter on invasive plants in New England, complete with photos of the top culprits. The photos, along with brief descriptions of how the invasive plants negatively impact your garden makes it easy for readers to locate and remove these plants from their gardens.

There is also a comprehensive listing of ‘The Best Plants for New England Gardens’ with a colorful, easy-to-read key about how and where to use each plant. While I typically like to see a book include an image of every plant in a listing such as this, I’ll let The Green Garden slide.

At 224-pages, the book is substantial already. Adding a photo of all the plants listed would make the book too large and cumbersome. And frankly,  I think it’s much more important for readers to see color photos of the invasive plants since they are rarely offered in books.

The Green Garden definitely deserves a place on your bookshelf. It’s an invaluable resource for those who are just starting to create a habitat garden, as well as those of us who need a quick refresher every once in a while.

Note: I was given a copy of The Green Garden by the publisher, Bunker Hill Publishing, for the express purpose of reviewing it. And, Ellen Sousa and I both write for the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. From the first time I read one of Ellen’s blog posts, I felt like I’d stumbled upon a kindred spirit. Ellen is farther along her path as a habitat gardener than I am, so I often look to her for knowledge and inspiration. Having said that, I would not have written a review of The Green Garden if I didn’t want my readers to know about the book. Instead of having to tell Ellen and her publisher that I decided not to review her book, I was thrilled to be able to tell Ellen, ‘Oh my goodness, I just LOVE your book!”.

The Green Garden

List Price: 34.95
Sale Price: 29.95
Savings of 15%

Whether you have just purchased a new property with a garden to tend, or have made a rash personal decision to go ‘Green’ or are just looking at the same old backyard that needs attention, this book is definitely for you! Read More…

The Green Garden

The Green Garden : A New England Guide to Planning, Planting, and Maintaining the Eco-Friendly Habitat,

Ellen Sousa (Bunker Hill Publishing, 2011)

Reviewed by Maureen Horn, Mass Hort Librarian

What makes a ‘green’ garden? Aren’t all gardens ‘green’ by definition? Ellen Sousa has some strongly held and eloquently stated views that an ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘beneficial’ habitat is essential to our long-term environmental well being. She has written a book that is specific to New England that tells how to create such a garden.

Ms. Sousa sets a high but reasonable threshold for her gardens; namely, that they must be sustainable for enjoyment by future generations. They should be beneficial in that they attract the animals and insects that were indigenous to our area before European settlement. Her goal is to gradually reverse the missteps made over a period of centuries. She acknowledges that doing so takes hard work, but that it can be done in small, manageable steps.

The steps are easy at the beginning, such as introducing durable native plants like violets and goldenrod. Surprisingly, Ms. Sousa is not opposed to growing non-native species provided they aren’t potentially invasive. Japanese crabapples, for example, don’t push their neighbors out of the way. Moreover, they attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Above all, though, she wants us to enjoy our gardens. To help us appreciate them, Ms. Sousa has filled her book with gorgeous photographs paired with the words of noted writers.

Her steps to creating a garden start with having a vision of the final result. That, in turn, takes careful preparation and she believes a great way of planning a habitat landscape is to take a tour of the neighborhood. The Green Garden points out what to look for during the tour in order to identify what plants and animals are already thriving there.

Some books on eco-gardening can become shrill when discussing what is ‘allowed’ and what is not. Many of those books also adopt a ‘this way or not at all’ attitude. Ms. Sousa doesn’t fall into this category. Instead of idealizing the potential habitat gardener, she recognizes that many of us may have misgivings about inviting what we call pests into our sanctuaries.

For example, knowing that insects are not usually the favorite life forms of many people, she motivates us to attract them by giving examples of how they are necessary to most birds. She knows that not all wildlife is welcome in our garden and gives advice on how ways to discourage or distract certain animals. Never forgetting that attracting wildlife is the main goal of the habitat gardener, though, she mandates what is needed to attract moving creatures in a chapter called, “Habitat Essentials”.

The book is generous with lists of plants for every kind of soil and amount of sunlight. Far from focusing on just the suburban gardener, Ms. Sousa spreads her advice all around New England, helping the reader to manage forests and farms, to landscape near the shoreline and near freshwater ponds, streams and other wetlands, and to plant in small spaces, for example, on rooftops.

The author knows that hope and hard work are important, but that knowledge is more important. We look forward to hearing Ellen Sousa during a lecture in mid-spring. Reading the book ahead of time should act as a catalyst to enlightened questions.

The Green Garden

List Price: 34.95
Sale Price: 29.95
Savings of 15%

Whether you have just purchased a new property with a garden to tend, or have made a rash personal decision to go ‘Green’ or are just looking at the same old backyard that needs attention, this book is definitely for you! Read More…

Ellen Sousa is a Massachusetts-based garden coach and teacher whose enthusiasm for creating backyard habitat sanctuaries has made her a popular speaker and natural-style garden tour guide across New England. She lives in Spencer, MA with her husband, Robert, along with 2 dogs, on a small farm landscaped as a natural habitat for farm animals, wild birds and pollinators. She writes about habitat gardening in New England at blog.THBFarm.com and is a team member at BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com and NativePlantWildlifeGarden.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Green Garden

List Price: 34.95
Sale Price: 29.95
Savings of 15%

Whether you have just purchased a new property with a garden to tend, or have made a rash personal decision to go ‘Green’ or are just looking at the same old backyard that needs attention, this book is definitely for you! Read More…

The Green Garden

List Price: 34.95
Sale Price: 29.95
Savings of 15%

DESCRIPTION

Whether you have just purchased a new property with a garden to tend, or have made a rash personal decision to go ‘Green’ or are just looking at the same old backyard that needs attention, this book is definitely for you!

Designed and written in a practical no nonsense comprehensive style The Green Garden is an inspirational guidebook. If you are looking for low-cost, beautiful and earth-friendly ways to “green” those landscapes and outdoor spaces and supply an adequate habitat for a whole variety of declining species, including birds, native pollinators, honey bees, amphibians and turtles, this book will be invaluable.

It includes an extensive Plant Guide, detailing the best wildlife-friendly plants suitable for the varied conditions and microclimates found across New England, along with cultivation hints and tips, and the species attracted by each plant.

Broken down into sections for Annuals, Vegetables and Herbs, Bulbs and Perennials, Shrubs, Vines, and Medium to Large “Mast” Trees, The Green Garden includes an introduction and photos from renowned native plant author and propagator William Cullina, formerly from the New England Wild Flower Society, now Curator at Coastal Maine Botanic Garden.

REVIEW

Maureen Horn, Massachusetts Horticultural Society, What makes a ‘green’ garden? Aren’t all gardens ‘green’ by definition? Ellen Sousa has some strongly held and eloquently stated views that an ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘beneficial’ habitat is essential to our long-term environmental well being. She has written a book that is specific to New England that tells how to create such a garden.  click here for full review

Debbie, Garden of Possibilities, The days of simply viewing our gardens as pretty accessories that adorn our homes are waning. Instead, smart gardeners want a green garden — one that supports local wildlife, is a haven for birds, butterflies and bees and is beautiful. click here for full review

Marilyn K. Alaimo, Chicago Botanic Garden “When perusing these pages, readers can’t help but recall the words of Midwest landscape architect/gardeners Ossian Cole Simonds (1855–1931) and Jens Jensen (1860–1951) who introduced and advocated the use of native plants in the landscape. Ellen Sousa has furthered their thoughts in this manual on the importance of creating and maintaining grounds that support nature.” click here for full review

PRODUCT DETAILS

Hardcover: 224 pages, 225 color  photos
ISBN-10:
ISBN-13: 978-1-59373-091-8
Language: English
Dimensions:
Weight:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen Sousa is a Massachusetts-based garden coach and teacher whose enthusiasm for creating backyard habitat sanctuaries has made her a popular speaker and natural-style garden tour guide across New England. She lives in Spencer, MA

Fixit time, like the rain doesn’t seem to go away.  Ellen Sousa’s magnum opus The Green Garden is about to go to the printer but we are waiting on William Cullina for his promised introduction and, talking of the Fixit of all Fixits he is busy fixing the last trimmings for a new garden at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden. He must know what Fixit means! The amount of activity on their website is amazing. http://www.mainegardens.org I’ll stick to publishing.

Meantime Bert Dodson has delivered everything for his fall book Helping Santa: My First Adventure with Grandma. His attention to detail and composition is fabulous and the story is a delight. We always give him too little time but he is now in recovery before starting (is there no peace for the wicked?) on his next children’s title with the great and award-winning author Lynda Booth-Sweeny about Daniel Chester French; he of the Lincoln Memorial statue of Abraham Lincoln the Great Man himself.

Nessa Flax

Nessa Flax dropped by a day or so ago. Nothing to fix it seems but a long natter about possible books to come and the nature of memoir and autobiography and whether they are the same. I’m with Gore Vidal in that autobiography as history is more a question of worldly context and period, and memoir is also history but in a personal context. I’d add that both are often a competition between vanity and self indulgence! The worst of the first come from mendacious politicians like Tony Blair and George Bush and the worst of the second come from all those ghastly and vacuous twenty-something personalities whose horizons never seem to extend beyond their navels.

The Best? Call me eccentric but I think one can be objective about the worst but for the best it is a matter of taste and timing. My random list would include Valentine Chirol’s Fifty Year’s in a Changing World (if you’ve a taste for good journalism and Imperial British arrogance), John Osborne’s A Better Class of Person (the best writing by far despite the theatrical spite) and, if you like academic thinkers as I do, perhaps R.G.Collingwood’s An Autobiography, Richard Cobb’s People and Places and George Steiner’s Errata. All a bit obscure I’ll grant but I’d also happily take The Education of Henry Adams or Grant’s Memoirs to the beach too.

Mine will be slim to a point of honor and entitled “Moving Rapidly On…”

Brief digital discomfiture with designers and editors under pressure can make one nostalgic for the days of Wraps and Inserts, for those salad days when paste-ups were cumbersome piles of paper hiding that long extinct being The Paste-up Artist, Grant Enlargers occupied the corner spaces, and designers worked at tables rather than screens.  An unholy amount of sweat and skill is going in to ensuring The Green Garden gets to press on time but the mind boggles at the thought of pulling this off twenty or so years ago!

Romeo

Romeo: The Story of an Alaskan Wolf has sold out.  We are reprinting for the fall. The book got the most remarkable and generous endorsement from the great and wonderful Farley Mowat. After a paragraph of fulsome praise for the book he ends with a salute to our author “I envy John Hyde as I have never envied another human being.” You can’t get much kinder than that. Thank you again Farley!

A Dream of Dragons

And speaking of fulsome praise and Northsome folk Willem Lange and Mary Azarian will be talking about their book A Dream of Dragons: A Saga in Verse this Thursday June 9th and Sunday June 12th at Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro http://www.everyonesbks.com/ and the Village Square bookshop in Bellows Falls http://www.villagesquarebooks.com/event/willem-lange-mary-azarian-dream-dragons respectively. We are getting to the end of a marathon of appearances but nothing has dulled the joy of watching these two transport their audience with their art and poetry. Your publisher will be there too to make sure!

Now where was I – oh yes we have a dose the hoary old saw called Commas and Capitalization. I’m sworn to secrecy but we have had our fingers rapped by better Grammarians than I Gunga Din! So long as they don’t start in on my colons I’ll be ok. I know Googling is the first and last refuge of the desperate but on this occasion Commas and Capitalization got me 577,000 results in 0.08 seconds, Comma 226,000,000 results in 0.20 seconds and Capitalization 13,800,000 results in 0.09 seconds.

I’m ready.

The Green Garden

The Green Garden and its cover: Grace won over Green. It is going to be a classic look. I liked the original but perhaps more for the conceit than the result so all’s well, author’s happy, one less moving part to worry about. Here it is:

Belle

The color proofs for Belle: The amazing Astonishing Magical Journey of an Artfully Painted Lady. They are everything we wanted and have been packed off to the author before going back to the printer with a few minor comments. The printer in Hong Kong is getting restless and wants to know how many to print. Scary stuff – overstocks and too many returns loom through the haze of enthusiasm and optimism. Ordering paper has also become an issue what with all the Japanese paper mills disrupted by the crisis over there. Have to tell them this week. The calculator is getting hot. Here is where the adventure starts (in the book I mean).

Sometimes the moving parts move about of their own accord. Next year we are publishing a monumental (in more ways than one) study of English Armor in the 15^th century: The Armour of the English Knight (note the English as opposed to American spelling, noblesse oblige!). Author now wants the book split into two volumes and to publish volume two first. Makes absolute sense if you know what I mean. There’s more to this than meets the eye.

“Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,

Our bending author hath pursued the story…”

As the Bard opined, but we digress. We will return to this in time!

At the risk of extending the moving part metaphor to breaking point my desk and computer screen can look like a mechanic’s bench as I try and resist taking a monkey wrench to an awkward contract or over-inking a sales blurb in red marginal screams.  I work in piles of paper old style. It is the season for Fixits as we move into full gear for the fall list.

As in the wall list above the bench:

Intro to our web catalogue not strong enough: Fixit

Contract for our amazing The Very Scary Monster has scary clause: Fixit

Sales need sales material yesterday: Fixit

Two more bookshops want events with Henry Homeyer for his Organic Gardening (not just) in the North East: Fixit. Can’t: Henry’s boondoggling down the Grand Canyon for some Travel Magazine. Alright for some…(note to self: remind him to Tweet next time)

Rep’s Tipsheet for one of the fall titles has gone missing: redo from scratch argggh!

You get the picture…