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Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

 Written by Heather Jo Flores and published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company in 2006. The original version of this book is out of print, and a fully-revised new edition is coming in Spring 2021. Meanwhile, enjoy! And feel free to offer feedback to the author directly.
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Foreword (by Toby Hemenway)

1/13/2019

 
As I write this, one of America’s busiest highways, the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago, is being torn up and enlarged. Long traffic delays have led thousands of commuters to leave their cars at home and ride buses or the city’s famous El to work. And they hate it. Mass transit takes longer, but that is not the real issue. For too many people, the car commute is the only time they are alone, away from the pressures and demands of family, boss, and coworkers. The fuel saving and pollution reducing bus or train, rather than being a relaxing and meditative time to read, listen to music, or simply stare out the window, is felt as a theft of the few moments they have to themselves. Car commuters may complain about the time wasted in traffic jams and the soaring cost of gas, but faced with the prospect of riding among strangers for an hour each day, most would much rather simmer alone indefinitely on a highway-turned-parking-lot.

This dilemma points to some colossal design flaws in our culture. Who would create a system in which so many forces conspire against the ecological act of leaving your car at home and taking public trans- portation? Why do we need so badly to escape our families, friends, jobs, and those with whom we anonymously share our communities? How do we begin to disconnect from the pressures and ugliness forced into our lives, and to reconnect, by choice, with the people, places, and things that give us joy?

The title of this book may have led you to believe it is simply about trading turf for vegetables. It is far more: It is a road map for a personal and cultural transformation that begins on our own lawns and carries us into our neighborhoods, communities, and society. If we follow this path, it will leave us healthier, wiser, and more joyful.
Food Not Lawns is a radical book. I write that with some irony, because the simple suggestions and techniques that Heather Flores offers—grow a garden, talk to neighbors, and try to notice the consequences of our actions—would have been plain common sense to our forebears of just two or three generations ago. But today, when saving a seed can result in a lawsuit, catching water from your roof risks fines from the health department, and a gardening workshop in Sacramento ends in arrests for terrorism, small acts of self-reliance require not merely courage but unusual vision and persistence in the face of a deeply apathetic culture.

Although Heather’s stance is anti-corporate and anti-polluter, this book is not about stopping anything. It is about starting to create the world we want to see, a remarkably positive vision of a more fulfilling life gained in small, easy steps. Her writing unites science and magic, mechanics and mystery. She offers practical tools for reducing our manufactured dependencies and building our interdependence and helps us reconnect with ourselves, our land, and our communities.

​This is a book about grassroots practice, even though grass is antithetical to what Heather stands for. She helps us see our sterile swards as the embodiments of waste, overconsumption, and emptiness that they are, and she shows us ways to rebuild them into sources of physical and spiritual nourishment. Moving from our yards to the global terrain, she outlines the work that we face. But she wisely stays focused on the local and shows us what we can do right here without feeling overwhelmed. She can wade with grace and balance into taboo topics such as using human waste for fertilizer, and I can attest that she writes from not just a theoretical acquaintance with this and many other topics. She has done nearly everything she describes in this book, and done it well.

​Read this book. But don’t stop there. Help create the paradise gardens and communities that Heather herself is bringing into being. I’ll see you there.

Toby Hemenway
June 2006 

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    Table of Contents

    Foreword (by Toby Hemenway)

    1. Free Your Lawn

    2. Gaining Ground

    3. The Water Cycle

    4. The Living Soil

    5. Plants and Polycultures

    ​6. Seed Stewardship

    7. Ecological Design

    8. Beyond the Garden

    ​9. Into the Community

    10. Reaching Out

    11. Working Together

    12. The Next Generation
    ​

    ​Notes
    read food not lawns book for free
    illustrations by Jackie Holmstrom

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    ​Best Permaculture Books by Women

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    by Food Not Lawns author Heather Jo Flores
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    List of Local Food Not Lawns groups

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    Alabama
    Alabama/Mississippi Network for Peace and Justice
    Mobile Food Not Lawns


    California
    Claremont Food Not Lawns
    Coachella Valley Food Not Lawns
    North Coast Food Not Lawns
    Sacramento Food Not Lawns
    Santa Barbara Food Not Lawns
    San Diego Food Not Lawns
    Redwood City Edible Gardens
    Visalia Food Not Lawns


    Colorado
    Southwest Seed Library
    Denver Urban Gardens
    Homegrown Foods Colorado


    Connecticut
    Tristate Food Not Lawns


    Florida
    Dundee Food Not Lawns
    Talahassee Food Network
    Tampa Food Not Lawns
    Venice Grows Food


    Illinois
    Springfield Food Not Lawns
    Chicago Food Not Lawns
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    Indiana
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    Kansas
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    Louisiana
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    Missouri
    Columbia Urban Agricuture


    Nebraska
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    Oregon
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    Canada
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    Quebec
    Food Not Lawns St. Hubert


    Australia
    Food Not Lawns Fisherman's Paradise

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