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

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She has keen interest in agriculture and food politics and is setting up an urban farm in Birmingham.

And as I now embark on my second year in a new garden, Eat What You Grow has provided a source of inspiration to consider more ambitious plans for each of the seasons. 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. In Eat What You Grow , Alys 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. Split into three main sections, the book takes a holistic approach by building from the basics, which are edible perennials in a variety of sizes and growth habits, up to fillers that self-seed, through to toppings, which are annual plants that will thrive in this mixed system. 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.She has written seven books including T he Thrifty Gardener, The Edible Garden, The Thrifty Forager, Abundance , Hidden Nature and A Modern Herbal . I’ve enjoyed learning about some more unusual edible plants that I wouldn’t have thought of to grow. 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. Through anecdotal advice, you will learn how to raise and nurture your plants; from trees and shrubs to bulbs and climbers, Fowler covers everything from where to plant them, how to feed the soil and when they should be harvested. 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.

Eat What You Grow contains fewer lifestyle pictures, more focus on plants and more focus on science, which I'm sure all comes from a decade more of horticulture and more editorial influence with her publisher.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.