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The Ecological Gardener
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The Ecological Gardener: How to Create Beauty and Biodiversity from the Soil Up

Author Matt Rees-Warren

Design a garden for the future—because what we grow matters.

"Matt Rees-Warren explains why every square inch of Earth, including our gardens, has ecological significance... Excellent, timely, essential!" —Douglas W. Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope

Transform your garden into a self-sustaining haven for nature and wildlife. Ecological garden designer Matt Rees-Warren shares inspirational design ideas and practical projects to help you create a garden that is both beautiful today and sustainable tomorrow.

The Ecological Gardener will give you the tools to create an abundant, healthy garden from the soil up—a garden that welcomes birds and bees and allows native planting and wild flowers to flourish, with minimal carbon impact or need for fresh water. This book can guide both novice and experienced gardeners alike in their journey to a more ecological approach, and is full of practical projects and information, including:
• Finding the right design for your space
• Creating a wildflower meadow
• Building rainwater catchments and other tips for water conservation
• Making compost from kitchen waste, leaf mold, compost tea and more
• Creating a space for wildlife such as hedgehogs, bees and other pollinators
• Finding beauty in your garden during the winter

Matt will show you how to re-imagine how you garden, working with nature instead of controlling it, to create a space that promotes both wildlife and beauty.

About The Author

Matt Rees-Warren is an ecological gardener, designer and writer. During 15 years of life in the ‘outside’, he’s worked for the National Trust, been head gardener at Kilver Court Gardens, Somerset, had articles published in RHS The Garden, Somerset Life, and Country Gardener, and designed gardens for private clients in and around the South West. Through his work, Matt has looked to illuminate, propose and develop ecological gardening methods and practices. As an advocate of organic gardening, permaculture, no-dig gardening and wildlife gardening, among other practices, his style and ethos reflect the changing relationship between ourselves, our gardens and the natural world.

  • Publish Date: April 29, 2021
  • Format: eBook
  • Category: Gardening - Techniques
  • Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing UK
  • Pages: 224
  • US Price: $18.99
  • CDN Price: $33.50
  • ISBN: 978-1-64502-008-0
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Reviews

‘Engaging and quirky; full of ideas and inspiration for garden projects that you’ll be itching to try for yourself.’—Dave Goulson, author of The Garden Jungle

‘Finally, a book for UK gardeners who recognise the desperate need to share their gardens with nature. In The Ecological Gardener, Matt Rees-Warren explains why every square inch of planet Earth, including our gardens, has ecological significance, and he tells us exactly how to increase that significance in ways that will benefit us all. Excellent, timely, essential!’—Douglas W. Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope

‘Gardening fads and styles come and go, from topiaries to green walls to Tropicalisimo. Yet the arc of understanding what a garden is slowly bends to the less controlled and naturally friendly. As our understanding of the connectedness and mostly concealed weave and warp of “life entire” gains steam, so too does our desire to fully embrace the whole. Within this context, Matt Rees-Warren does an admirable job in explaining the objectives while providing the garden-maker a satisfyingly readable map from which to find one’s personal paradise that welcomes the natural world into our own backyard.’—Daniel J. Hinkley, author of Windcliff and The Explorer’s Garden

‘Gardening for nature shouldn’t be a radical act, but it takes courage to trade power tools and pesticides for hand tools and native plants. The Ecological Gardener helps you brave the rewilding of your own patch through practical, inspirational advice for growing lightly on the land. With Matt Rees-Warren and the natural world as your guides, you can welcome all your wild neighbors, from slugs to the newts who eat them, to your life-sustaining space.’—Nancy Lawson, author of The Humane Gardener

‘Matt Rees-Warren has distilled his experience, observation and passion for the natural world into an incredibly informative narrative, with practical examples to help us tread lightly on the land. Gardens are for people, but in our endeavour to create beauty, we forget that our space is shared with cohabitants and time. Matt takes us through the garden with an ecological lens – just what we need to view a future that is in harmony with nature itself.’—Arit Anderson, garden designer, chartered member of The Landscape Institute

"The accompanying narrative is what sets this book apart; the breadth and depth of Rees-Warren’s experience allows him reflections that result in a philosophical exploration that is far more than just instruction (though the instruction is high quality, too)."—Booklist