The Minimalist Gardener: Low Impact, No Dig Growing

Product Information

His minimalist approach uses techniques like no dig, raised beds, perennial vegetables and self-seeding salads as ground cover, plus mulching when appropriate. So much has happened in a decade, from studying topiary with Charlotte Molesworth, to clipping all over the UK (and eventually in the USA and Sweden) to selling shears and secateurs at garden shows and hiding away my reticence to give talks about gardening and topiary to Horticultural Societies across the UK. Patrick Holden from The Sustainable Food Trust wrote, "It is only towards the end of his life that the wider significance of permaculture ideas began to emerge. Mulch and other soil building techniques are welcome, and raised beds and other features such as rain barrels and compost bins have their place. This section is particularly helpful when it’s time to to start planning (or revolutionising) your plot for the next year, it’s also reassuring to conventional gardeners that they can make gains just by tweaking their existing practices and they don’t have to completely redesign from scratch.

He was a consulting editor of Permaculture magazine, featured on BBC, and taught permaculture design courses with his wife, Cathy. Through observing, season after season, he found the middle road, the sweet spot between productivity and ease.The best thing we can do as gardeners is to experiment, keep on watching and learning, and most of all enjoy the garden and the fruits of our labour. A few weeks ago we wrote about ‘the minimalist garden’ – and this got us thinking not so much about the features a minimalist garden has, but about how minimalism can be applied to the way we garden. This section gave me the confidence and interest to be able to volunteer at the next pruning session in a nearby orchard and gain some hands on experience.

Patrick Whitefield spent many years tending his vegetable garden and feeding himself and his wife Cathy with it’s produce. If you love lawns then sweep away the flowerbeds that clutter up your precious gardening time and go, tend your lawn. Written by an acknowledged expert, this friendly guide will help you grow food in whatever space you have - large or small, rural or urban - with minimal bought in inputs, and maximum satisfaction. He mixes annual hybrids, heritage varieties and perennial vegetables and has a pragmatic approach to selecting seeds and seed saving. He used to tell students that the ultimate permaculture design would require one simply to get out of bed in the morning, walk into the garden, lay on the ground and allow the food to fall into your open mouth!Patrick describes how to select plants based on what you like to eat and how to combine them in polycultures that confuse pests.