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Bookshop: Alternatives to the lawn

Permeable landscape, San Francisco

The permeable front yard design, pictured above, is a possible alternative to the lawn. Elizabeth Kolbert's makes an insightful statement about lawn alternatives in her essay titled "Turf War." She writes, "Of course, to advocate a single replacement for the lawn is to risk reproducing the problem. The essential trouble with the American lawn is its estrangement from place: it is not a response to the landscape so much as an idea imposed upon it--all green, all the time, everywhere." Below are several titles Kolbert mentions in her book review and which can be found at our bookshop along with other titles.

  • Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn
  • Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony
  • Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
  • Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn
  • Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community
  • Requiem for a Lawnmower, Revised Edition: Gardening in a Warmer, Drier, World

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