The Landscaping Ideas of Jays A Natural History of the Backyard Restoration Garden

About this book

Elegantly organized by season, this lyrical yet practical guide to backyard restoration gardening celebrates the beauty, the challenges, and the rewards of growing native plants at home. Judith Larner Lowry, winner of the prestigious John Burroughs award, here builds on themes from her best-selling Gardening with a Wild Heart, which introduced restoration gardening as a new way of thinking about land and people. Drawing on her experiences in her own garden, Lowry offers guidance on how to plan a garden with birds, plants, and insects in mind; how to shape it with trees and shrubs, paths and trails, ponds, and other features; and how to cultivate, maintain, and harvest seeds and food from a diverse array of native annuals and perennials. Working in passionate collaboration with the scrub jays, quail, ants, and deer who visit her garden, and inspired by other gardeners, including some of the women pioneers of native plant horticulture, Lowry shares the delights of creating site-specific, ever-changing gardens that can help us better understand our place in the natural world.

Contents

Preface My Dream Neighborhoods FALL 1. Esperando la Lluvia:Waiting for Rain 2. Birdsong Ripens Berries, Wind Brings the Seeds 3. The Keynote Bird: Creating Habitat through Focus on a Single Species 4. I Live in a Quail Yard: A Garden Designed with Quail in Mind 5. The Keynote Plant: Rules of Thumb for Garden Design 6. Sing Willow 7. The Landscaping Ideas of Jays 8. In Praise of the Unleaving: Deciduous Trees and Shrubs for the California Gardener WINTER 9. Eating the Rain 10. Eternal Vigilance: Featuring Bermuda Buttercup 11. Rain-time Reading 12. Supreme Advocate for California's Native Plants: Lester Rowntree 13. Bright Were Her Days: Edith Van Allen Murphey 14. An Inordinate Number of Good Things: Gerda Isenberg 15. Forest Gardens: The Lessons of Coarse Woody Debris SPRING 16. The Flower Dance in Modern Times 17. The Weed Dance in Modern Times 18. Do You Talk to Plants? 19. Rock Knows: Features for the Restoration Garden 20. Where's the Clover? The Real California Cuisine SUMMER 21. Saying Farewell to Spring: Growing Site-Specific Clarkias 22. The Preservation of Small Things 23. The Pollinators of Small Things 24. Animal Assistants 25. Celebrations from the Native Plant Palette 26. Fog Flower: Four Guidelines for Backyard Restoration Gardeners 27. Scale Is All: Large Shrubs and Small Trees THE FIFTH SEASON 28. The Quiet Time 29. The Berry Harvest 30. Paths and Trails: Making Our Way through the Restoration Garden 31. Everything's Here: The Late Summer Riches of the Pond Scum Production Area 32. Life Is Maintenance Coda: We Are Not the First Acknowledgments Notes Recommended Reading Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

For the past twenty-eight years Judith Larner Lowry has been the proprietor of Larner Seeds in Marin County, California. She is author of Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home (UC Press) and her essays have appeared in Orion, Bay Nature, and other magazines and anthologies, including American Nature Writing 1996, edited by John A. Murray. She lives in northern California.