I am an avid gardening dreamer, rather I aspire one day to be good at taking care of a garden and devour all types of book that explain how I could achieve this goal. In walks Vincent Simeone's "Sustainable Gardening' which is a marriage of two keen interests of mine, caring for the planet and the ideal of gardening. Within these pages you will find a guide on selecting plants, when you should undertake certain gardening tasks, how to start a compost, and honest conversations about the pros and cons of undertaking an organic approach. Gardening is not easy but seeing the clear progression of success as presented in this book I feel like I could actually succeed in tending the ground. I came for the knowledge, staid for the knowledge, and was drawn in by the beautiful photos! Make sure to check out this gardening collection must have. Happy gardening!

Beautiful pictures and great ideas and inspiration about sustainable gardening! Ideas are an arrangement of difficulty which gives anyone from beginner to intermediate something to be inspired by!

Thus would be ok for a complete beginner and I mean complete beginner but for everyone else it's just more of what gets churned out over and over and you've probably got enough of these type of books.

This was a super easy-to-read and informative book that all gardeners should have on their shelves. I love how this book broke gardening down into easy-to-understand topics and really sets out to teach you, as the reader, versus just providing information. The photos are beautiful and really add the perfect touch to this book.

Full of great useful information, easy to digest and understand. A handy tool you can easily reference later. Sections are organized well. I learned a lot, even as a seasoned gardener!

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Pretty interesting book but it was missing some pages, still giving it a 4 though

This seemed very generic - the information was very surface-level without much detail, the photos all seemed like stock images, and there wasn't much depth on "sustainability." This would be a good intro book for someone who's unfamiliar with gardening and/or what "sustainable" means, but for most people, not very useful.

While there is a lot of good info here for a beginner, I think that it's a little surface level, doesn't include a lot of advances that have been made in recent years. Its biggest crime is that it doesn't talk about growing zones, and how that effects what you can plant and where. You can't plan a garden without it!

Sustainable Gardening is a tutorial and gardening guide written by Vincent A. Simeone. Originally published in 2013 as Grow More With Less , this reformat and re-release is due out 16th March 2021 from Quarto on their Cool Springs Press imprint. It's 176 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

I just read an article that stated flatly that decades of exploitative mega-farming has completely depleted and destroyed the soil we literally depend on to provide us with food. Home gardeners and ecologists are always looking for ways to trap carbon, reuse, build up, and replenish the soil. This is a layman accessible, relevant, and usable manual full of tips to improve soil, grow plants and food, and do "more" with "less".

The introduction includes a good section on planning and philosophy/strategy followed by a useful and accessible introduction aimed at intentionally choosing plants which are suited to the place they're being planted and expected to grow. The author spends some time troubleshooting ways to manage garden pests whilst encouraging and supporting wildlife and the general health of the biome. Water is (obviously) an important consideration for maintenance, and there's a solid chapter on managing and using water responsibly and effectively. There has been a philosophical movement in home gardening to reduce the amount of open unornamented lawn and Mr. Simeone gives some compelling reasons why adopting a more natural and low maintenance planting aesthetic (with less lawn) makes sense in terms of resource use and renewability. There's a final chapter with some good advice on soil building and maintenance. The author has also included a short links and resources list (aimed at North American readers, but also useful for readers in other areas) and a cross referenced index.

The photography is very well done; clear and plentiful. Graphically, the layout is spare and easy to follow with double column text and highlighted text boxes for important points along with inset photographs and illustrations.

This would be a good selection for community gardens, public or school libraries, activities groups, or for the home gardener's library. Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

My husband and I have recently taken more of an interest in gardening and as complete beginners we have been reading up on tips, ideas and information for creating our perfect garden while also being as sustainable as we can while low maintenance is also an important consideration.

Sustainable Gardening was described as exactly the type of book we were looking for. The text is clearly and concisely set out and talks about current environmental concerns and the part that we as gardeners and consumers play in this. The author describes in detail the important basics that any aspiring gardener needs to know and highlights the importance of getting these things right and understanding them will help you to create the garden of your dreams. It highlights what we should be looking at and expecting from our garden in the next 6 months, a year, 5 years and beyond.

The book shows you that it is possible to have a lower maintenance garden and it still look beautiful and eye catching. The author shows you how to plan your garden from the very beginning to its fruition and all the steps you need to consider along the way.

I particularly liked the garden maintenance schedule as I feel that it will be something that, as an amateur gardener, I will often refer back to.

The detailed plant section highlights many various different plants, shrubs and flowers and has descriptions on Ornamental value, Landscape value, Cultural requirements and Cultivars. New and seasoned gardeners alike are sure to find new information, tips and enjoy the bright and eye catching photographs. I would have liked to see a timescale for the best planting time for each shrub, plant and flowers as this is something that I am eager to learn myself as I start off on my own gardening adventures!

Overall I would definitely recommend this book and it feel it will be a valuable contribution to any gardeners bookshelf.

Thank you to the publisher Quartro Publishing Group-Cool Springs Press for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love books on gardening. They always inspire me. Sustainable Gardening is especially inspirational. There are great pictures, practical tips and lots and lots of ideas. If you are not a gardener, don’t worry. This book can help you get started or just feed your green dreams.

I read this at just the right time! A really nice guide to sustainable gardening. Good plans for shrubs and how to plan your gardening. Will need adapting to a British garden though.
Covers pest control but not in a great deal of detail and watering which is always useful!!

This book contains good but outdated information on sustainable gardening. You can tell that this was written by a garden "expert" who works in the mainstream on TV and in garden magazines and who has been around for a while, as this is stuff you would have read and seen 10 or 15 years ago in more progressive organic/sustainable venues. It's illustrated with stock images and these sometimes show gardens that clearly were not sustainably grown. For instance, they show lush, closely packed annuals and perennials that are surrounded by impeccable lawns. If you're really going to garden sustainably you're not going to end up with a magazine-worthy lawn. That's okay. It can be just as beautiful as those in its own way, or more. I wish there had been more images of gorgeous, more natural gardens. I know when you rely on stock photos you tend to mostly have those sort of artificial images, which is why I prefer garden authors who use their own gardens and those of their clients for examples.

Other complaints-- the small section of recommended shrubs and plants does not list garden zones, which makes it difficult to select plants if you're in a more extreme zone (temperature ranges are given instead, which we can translate but you have to read the text of every plant to find out). The plant profiles also don't say where the plants are native, what wildlife they help, and if they are edible or medicinal. The sections on pests and problems are also very old fashioned in recommending lots of treatments and interventions instead of just being truly sustainable and using basic principles like encouraging diversity in plants and wildlife, and accepting some damage as part of garden life. There is some good information but it reminds me a lot of getting herbal information from your family doctor. In the list of pros and cons of organic gardening, there was no mention of the fact that we now know that plants that are grown under more challenging circumstances like having to deal with pests, water shortages or poor soil actually produce far more healthy compounds like phytonutrients that we benefit from when we eat them. I've seen this mentioned in at least a half dozen natural gardening and health books in the past year because these plants pass on so many compounds that can help us resist disease, but it's not mentioned here. Again, this feels like the latest knowledge of the field 15 years ago, not for those who study the science and latest news now.

I'm not sure who Simeone's target audience is, but he doesn't even say that climate change is man-made or really a threat. He caters at times to the audience that believes it's a natural cycle that we have nothing to do with and things may magically return to cooler temperatures at some point in the near future. I'm not sure that audience really cares about having a sustainable garden, but this is a nice "sustainable lite" book for them, I suppose. And there are lots of good bits to it, it's just very watered down and mainstream as a whole.

Reading the blurb from Net Galley, it seems that this is an updated version of the author's 2013 book Grow More With Less: Sustainable Garden Methods: Less Water - Less Work - Less Money. That makes a lot of sense, and you'll see that there were a lot of gardeners not terribly impressed with the first version.

This could be a great book for conventional gardeners who are interested in transitioning to a more sustainable way of growing or those who are brand new to gardening, but there are better books out there for those of us who are already fairly knowledgeable about the topic.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

Sustainable Gardening is a very informative book. From an ecological perspective, I was given many ideas and thoughts about how to garden that I did not know. The book covers all aspects of gardening from planning, which plants to grow and a practical use of your space. I highly recommend this book for all gardeners. I was given this book as an ARC from Goodreads. My thoughts and opinions are my own