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The first edition of Gaia's Garden sparked the imagination of America's home gardeners, introducing permaculture's central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant and sustainable gardens. As Toby Hemenway demonstrates, it's satisfying and easy to create a permaculture garden, a complete backyard ecosystem, by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:

• Building and maintaining soil fertility and structure
• Catching water and conserving it in the landscape
• Providing habitat for beneficial insects, birds and animals
• Growing an edible "forest" that yields seasonal fruits, nuts and other foods

This revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban sustainable permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture details the steps to designing and assembling an ecological garden, whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive and more beautiful.

About the Author: Toby Hemenway is the author of the first major North American book on permaculture, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, and an adjunct assistant professor at Portland State University. He teaches permaculture and consults and lectures on ecological design throughout the country. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home and Kitchen Gardener.