Book Review: The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Food in Harmony with Nature by Tammi Hartung

The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Food in Harmony with Nature by Tammi Hartung is a book that can help nature lovers understand how to make their yard and garden friendly to the wildlife around them while still maintaining a vegetable crop of their own. Co-existence

between man, animals, and the insect world is the goal here, and the book offers some great suggestions for working with nature rather than trying to tame it and trying to force it to fit our vision.

The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener works to foster understanding and supports working with the surrounding environment instead of continually fighting it. The goal here is to reap a larger harvest with much less stress and effort. Solutions begin with a hardy and healthy garden, creating beneficial relationships through smart planting, attracting helpful insects and pollinators, intentionally creating habitats for wildlife, and much more. My only issue with the book is that most of the idea and issue dealt with are aimed at individuals with large amounts of land. Even mentions of 'smaller' gardening spaces dealt with spaces much larger than what my suburban home offers, however I do know people just a quarter mile away that could make great use of the information. I enjoyed reading about the efforts to work with rather than against nature and despite my very small gardening spaces, there was some information that I fully intend to put to good use this spring.

The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener is a wonderful resource to gardeners that have large plots of land and/or have issues with wildlife taking more than they would like of their harvest. Offered solutions are simple and mindful or the greater good and environment.