‘Noah’s Garden’ was one of the early books advocating using
native plants and gardening for the wildlife. Stein relates, in wandering
fashion, the long process she and her husband undertook of returning a large
site to something sustainable and critter friendly- both macro and micro. She
shows the problem with having a lawn instead of a meadow, and with planting
exotic (non-native plants) to the exclusion of natives. Not having a landscape
that provides food and shelter to native insects, birds, and mammals means that
pest species numbers just explode with nothing to keep them in check. And that
point is where people end up reaching for the spray gun.
It’s a very interesting book for the most part, although it
bogs down near the end and I started skimming for a while. There are sources
that go into more detail about meadows, pest species, and gardening for
wildlife available now, but it’s a nice starting point. Four stars.
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