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Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards | 
| Author: Sara B. Stein
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $0.48
You Save: $13.52 (97%)
New (33) Used (43) Collectible (2) from $0.48
Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 89857
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0395709407
Dewey Decimal Number: 574.5264
UPC: 046442709408
EAN: 9780395709405
ASIN: 0395709407
Publication Date: April 24, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
What kind of grass is planted behind your house? What insects burrow in your soil, and what birds eat them? What's happening in that compost pile you're so proud of? This book may well change the view from your patio. A former old-style suburban gardener, Sara Stein writes convincingly of the ecological history of suburbia and the necessity of good stewardship of the land stolen from prairies and forests to make our back yards.
Product Description
Published to rave reviews in 1993, Noah's Garden shows us how our landscape style of neat yards and gardens has devastated suburban ecology, wiping out entire communities of plants and animals by stripping bare their habitats and destroying their food supplies. When Stein realized what her intensive efforts at making a traditional garden had done, she set out to "ungarden." Her book interweaves an account of her efforts with an explanation of the ecology of gardens. Noah's Garden has become the bible of the new environmental gardening movement, and the author is one of its most popular spokespersons.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 well written look at our impact on ecosystems October 8, 2008
Stein is an excellent science writer who makes the major concepts of ecology come alive in this work. She uses her personal story as a homeowner to illustrate how the suburbs have devastated our natural ecosystems and what we can do to help restore some sort of natural balance with the native wildlife in our area.
pioneering the suburban frontier August 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is a remarkably thoughtful book. it is also, at heart, wonderfully simple. sara stein says that it is not ours to take or to give, but simply to plant. she also has a simply brilliant chapter about grass and how to keep it and how to give it up.
if you can find a copy, this is the perfect book for friends who decide to move to the suburbs.
lynn hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine
I laughed and I cried July 23, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sara Stein's books are amazing. She manages to lump concrete facts and advice in with lyrical symphonies to the restoration of a safe, secure ecosystem. She also makes me laugh in the process. In one section she discusses the formula for determining what size a meadow has to be, how many herbivores it has to contain, and how many predators. The question is what poundage of predator does the meadow support. Her answer: "You've got me. Don't ask me to weigh owls."
I love it!
The part that made me cry was chapter 10 - Frogs: in Memorium. I remember so well the bullfrogs from my childhood. Sara Stein has written what she did not intend to be the swan song of the frogs, but rather a call to do something about that part of the environment we CAN affect -- our own backyard.
I list this book on my website as an invaluable resource for gardeners of any experience level. Even non-gardeners would benefit from reading NOAH'S GARDEN.
Thank you, Sara August 30, 2006
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I was sorry to hear Ms. Stein died before I had a chance to write a letter thanking her for this book. As a beginning gardner I attended a lecture she gave at a local college. My only criteria for landscaping at the time was to find the most colorful, longest-blooming plants, despite their area of origin. Ms. Stein made me realize how important it is to also provide native plants to benefit the creatures we have displaced with our rampant building. A few years ago I bought a 7.5 acre undeveloped parcel and recently had a small log cabin built on it. I plan to spend the rest of my life restoring the prairies, woodlands and wetlands with the help of this book as well as the sequel, Planting Noah's Garden. I hope Ms. Stein knew she had a great impact on many lives. Thank you, Sara.
 Charming memoir March 23, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book is a charming memoir that follows the cycle of destruction and restoration of a piece of land in Westchester County. After moving in, the author and her husband set to clearing and "gardening" the land -- only to notice that they had driven away the quail and the frogs by changing their habitat. The author then set herself upon the task of learning about ecosystems and restoring her land. The book is as much about animals as it is about plants -- and really about the complex systems that have arisen in nature for plants and animals to support one another. The author's overarching vision is that of a suburbia with enough habitat (woods/meadows) replacing pieces of individual yards to support the animals that have been displaced by vast expanses of mowed lawns.
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