Eat What You Grow: How to Have an Undemanding Edible Garden That Is Both Beautiful and Productive

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She has contributed to G ardens Illustrated, The Observer Food Monthly, The National Geographic and Country Living . Among the many possibilities, there are familiar faces such as fig trees, rocket and beetroot, as well as less commonplace plants and varieties such as Korean celery (Dystaenia takesimana) and mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum), a flowering plant from the Andes with edible tubers. In 'Eat What You Grow', Alys Fowler shows you how to create a rich, biodiverse garden that feeds not only you, but supports a wide range of pollinators, bees and butterflies, as well as other wildlife.

She is fascinated by urban nature and how we make space for it and was a creative consultant on public spaces and recently helped design the Greenwich Peninsula Gardens. I bought this book alongside “The Edible Garden”, (which i had been watching on the television), thinking it would be a food addition to my gardening library. Fowler suggests that it is far less time consuming to garden alongside nature rather than being a chore that includes constant weeding and back-breaking digging. Even if you have read her earlier books The Edible Garden then there's still something to be gained from Eat What You Grow as there's a lot more introductory information about Polycultures in the latter. From perennial vegetables that come back year after year, to easy-to-grow delights, she has selected plants that hold their own in both the garden and on the plate.

It suggests building a garden out of three components, "basics" (perennials), "fillers" (self-seeders that look after themselves) and "toppings" (more labour-intensive annuals). If the initial age verification is unsuccessful, we will contact you asking you to provide further information to prove that you are aged 18 or over. In ‘Eat What You Grow’, Alys Fowler shows you how to create a rich, biodiverse garden that feeds not only you, but supports a wide range of pollinators, bees and butterflies, as well as other wildlife.

All of the plants that Fowler has incorporated into this book have been selected so that they hold their own not just in a garden but on the plate. She has an allotment and an urban back garden with two chickens, lots of flowers and plenty of vegetables. This book proposes a way of gardening where edible plants are incorporated into gardens, rather than being the sole preserve of allotments and kitchen gardens. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Interesting and well written, but a huge disappointment after Alys's previous book, The Edible Garden.

By comparison, there are far fewer photos, and the ones that are present are grainy and most frustratingly unlabelled! A gardener, author and journalist, Alys Fowler is a regular contributor to the Guardian and Gardener’s World and is the author of books on gardening, food and nature, including: The Edible Garden, The Thrifty Gardener, Plant Love and Hidden Nature. I was especially intrigued by the Edible Water Garden section, as this is entirely unknown territory for me and I’d love to try my hand at growing edible aquatic plants.

It's lacking the introductory detail to give structure, and some of the chapters feel rather cursory. In Eat What You Grow, Alys Fowler shows you how to create a rich, biodiverse garden that feeds not only you, but supports a wide range of pollinators, bees and butterflies, as well as other wildlife.She also teaches you simple and effective design tools that will ensure your garden looks striking and wild, brings joy to your world and feeds you day after day.