Embrace Your Space - review

Embrace Your Space

Janet Luke

New Holland Publishers

RRP $45.00

Reviewed by Dawn Forbes

This book follows last year’s instructive Green Urban Living by Janet Luke but this one provides advice and ideas for gardening in small spaces such as a patio, balcony, roof, windowsill, or even when you have no space – true, check out chapter eight.

Embrace Your Space is divided into two sections. Part one covers Your Space which includes most small garden situations and the challenges of living in cities and Part two covers More on How & What to Grow. 

Each chapter has all the information and tips you need for plant selection and their suitability for your own particular space, whether it is windy, sunny, shady, wet, dry, tiny or not so tiny. You will enjoy the “Top Tips” that appear all through the book, and the lists of suitable plants such as “edible plants that can tolerate wind” or “window boxes through the seasons” and “vines for screening a shady boundary”.  Every possible garden situation is covered.  The author discusses pot and container types and many of these will surprise you, although I don’t suggest you follow her meals-on-wheels suggestion using a discarded supermarket shopping trolley.

The chapter on how and what to grow when you have “no space” includes a piece on what has become known overseas as guerrilla gardening which means using community neglected or under-utilised urban spaces. This could be a good solution for council-owned grass berms, or verges, which are becoming uncared for.  The advice is very responsible and calls for the location of all underground services to be checked first, ensuring the plantings do not obstruct the view for cars reversing out of driveways and that they are kept tidy and properly maintained.  It could also provide fruit and vegetables for the neighbourhood, an idea worthy of more discussion.

There is far more useful information in Embrace Your Space than I can summarise here so find a copy and enjoy for yourself.

Dawn Forbes is a space-challenged-inner-city gardener and a regular reviewer on this blog.