Grow Now
How We Can Save Our Health, Communities, and Planet—One Garden at a Time
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
“Grow Now is an earth manual that applies to everyone, everywhere. Regenerating life begins with our hands, the soil, and our heart. Take this book and go outside, stay outside, and transform.” —Paul Hawken, author of Drawdown and Regeneration
Did you know you can have a garden that’s equal parts food source and wildlife haven? In Grow Now, Emily Murphy shares easy-to-follow principles for regenerative gardening that foster biodiversity and improve soil health. She also shows how every single yard mirrors and connects to the greater ecosystem around us.
No-dig growing, composting and mulching smartly, and planting a variety of edible perennials that attract bees and butterflies are all commonsense techniques everyone can use to grow positive change. You'll also find detailed advice on increasing your nature quotient, choosing plants that cycle more carbon back into the soil, selecting a broader variety of vegetables and fruits to improve overall soil fertility, rethinking space devoted to lawns, and adding companion plants for pollinators to rewild any plot of land.
Exquisitely photographed and filled with helpful lists and sidebars, Grow Now is an actionable, hopeful, and joyful roadmap for growing our way to individual climate contributions. Gardening is climate activism!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pass the Pistil blogger Murphy (Grow What You Love) delivers an encouraging primer on gardening as a way to combat climate change. She shoots for a simple equation: "my garden + your garden + your neighbor's garden = save the planet one garden at a time," and argues that people shouldn't succumb to the idea that climate change is too big a problem for ordinary people to confront. Murphy begins with an overview of carbon, the "essential building block of life" and "the main ingredient in soil organic matter," and offers tips for maintaining soil health, most of which involve fostering biodiversity. She outlines a slew of regenerative gardening practices, including no-dig gardening, composting, and planting native crops. There's a comprehensive plant guide, too, which covers edible perennials (such as artichokes, asparagus, and chives), edible perennial vines (grapes and chayote), bird and butterfly favorites (including buckwheat and milkweed), and soil builders (broad grass and clover among them). Murphy's account is loaded with easy-to-implement tips, inspiring photos, and useful lists, and she's full of passion: "In our gardens, we can repair ourselves and our plots of earth with our own two hands." New gardeners will find this a fine starting point, and those with dirt already under their nails will enjoy the nudge to try something new.
