The way we currently produce our food is damaging both to ourselves and our planet: we need to create gardens, woodlands and farms which are in harmony with nature. Though all natural ecosystems provide excellent examples to follow, Plants For a Future specifically focuses on edible species, suggesting a wide variety of easily grown perennials and self-seeding annuals which produce delicious and healthy food.
Describing edible and other useful plants, both native to Britain and Europe, and from other temperate areas around the world, Plants For a Future includes those suitable for: the ornamental garden, the lawn, shady areas, ponds, walls, hedges, agroforestry and conservation. It offers alternative methods of growing these plants in ways that are in harmony with the local environment and can help to improve the overall health of the planet.
In his thoroughly useful book, Ken Fern shares his experiments and successes in growing herbs, vegetables, flowers, shrubs and trees. Packed with information, personal anecdotes and detailed appendices and indexes, this pioneering book takes gardening, conservation and ecology into a new dimension.
It is hoped that Plants For a Future will stimulate interest in these plants; help us increase the range of foods in our diet; and encourage experimentation with well known and unfamiliar species.
“It is hard to over-estimate the importance and likely impact of this book. It shows us how to use land more efficiently and sustainably than ever before, and it brings to our sadly limited cuisine a vast new range of remarkable foods, all around the year. The result of an insatiable curiosity and years of painstaking research.” Professor George Monbiot, environmental campaigner, founder of The Land Is Ours.