The Good Garden: How to Nurture Pollinators, Soil, Native Wildlife, and Healthy Food—All in Your Own Backyard

Master gardener McLaughlin (Vertical Vegetable Gardening) compiles a greatest-hits of sustainable gardening ideas in this somewhat cursory outing. Driven by the desire to “restore and replenish the land that is restoring and replenishing me,” the author encourages readers to make use of regenerative gardening practices to improve soil, promote biodiversity, and protect local waterways. McLaughlin explains a wealth of gardening philosophies, including permaculture (“living in harmony with nature”), biodynamic gardening (in which a garden is “an organism unto itself”), and French intensive methods (in which “crops are planted up to five times closer” than normal). She also suggests looking to the natural world for solutions to common gardening problems: one can combat pests by cultivating a healthy population of insects, birds, and bats, for example, while covering bare ground goes a long way in reducing weeds, preventing erosion, maintaining moisture, and insulating plant roots. McLaughlin’s commitment to stewardship runs deep, but here she spreads herself a bit thin, touching on many topics but not really digging into any of them. The frequent stock photos, meanwhile, don’t show her ideas in action. Less a detailed how-to than a chatty why-do-it, this is likely to leave readers wanting. (Feb.)