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Ken Fern leads us through a garden of improbable delights - cold climate yams five feet long, edible fuschia fruits, trees laden with delicious berries all through the winter, leaves and flowers with the most subtle and astonishing flavours. It is hard to over-estimate the importance and likely impact of this book. Plants for a Future hugely widens the range of edible species which we can, with confidence, grow in temperate climates. It shows us how to use land more efficiently and sustainably than ever before, and it brings to our sadly limited cuisine a vast new range of remarkable foods, all around the year. It is, in short, the first shot in an impending horticultural revolution. The result of an insatiable curiosity and years of painstaking research, this book is comparable in stature only to the works of Evelyn and Culpeper. --George Monbiot
Ken's enthusiasm and pertinent, honest observations make his writing as easily digested as the edible plants he loves. I'm delighted that this treasure trove of information has been marshalled between book covers and so made more accessible and preserved for future generations. --Joy Larkcom
In the 1970s British bus driver Ken Fern went back to the land. Twenty-five years later he published the first edition of this now-revised compendium, a catalog and guide to a staggering number of mostly-perennial plants that can be harvested for food and other uses. Literally, thousands of seed, root, fruit, flower and leaf crops from a range of bulbs, trees, shrubs, climbers, bamboos, water plants and more. Beyond climatic needs and appearance, plants are described in terms of their taste and, often, highly-specific use (e.g. Asarum canadense. SNAKE ROOT: 'a ginger substitute in flavouring cooked foods'). The index is conveniently broken up into edible uses (like condiments and egg and salt substitutes) and non-edible uses (like basketry, disinfectant, and tooth care); for more, check out 100 Other Uses. And actually, the Plants for a Future web site offers a searchable database of 7,000 plants. While much of the info from the book is available online, the printed format can be easier to peruse and digest. There are sections on 'green manures' and how to mulch with cardboard boxes or newspaper and straw, as well as how to make a pond. Despite all the ideas and potential outlined in the book, the final chapter, 'Future Possibilities', truly emphasizes the magical allure of cultivation and experimentation. --Steven Leckart, Cool Tools
Ken's enthusiasm and pertinent, honest observations make his writing as easily digested as the edible plants he loves. I'm delighted that this treasure trove of information has been marshalled between book covers and so made more accessible and preserved for future generations. --Joy Larkcom
In the 1970s British bus driver Ken Fern went back to the land. Twenty-five years later he published the first edition of this now-revised compendium, a catalog and guide to a staggering number of mostly-perennial plants that can be harvested for food and other uses. Literally, thousands of seed, root, fruit, flower and leaf crops from a range of bulbs, trees, shrubs, climbers, bamboos, water plants and more. Beyond climatic needs and appearance, plants are described in terms of their taste and, often, highly-specific use (e.g. Asarum canadense. SNAKE ROOT: 'a ginger substitute in flavouring cooked foods'). The index is conveniently broken up into edible uses (like condiments and egg and salt substitutes) and non-edible uses (like basketry, disinfectant, and tooth care); for more, check out 100 Other Uses. And actually, the Plants for a Future web site offers a searchable database of 7,000 plants. While much of the info from the book is available online, the printed format can be easier to peruse and digest. There are sections on 'green manures' and how to mulch with cardboard boxes or newspaper and straw, as well as how to make a pond. Despite all the ideas and potential outlined in the book, the final chapter, 'Future Possibilities', truly emphasizes the magical allure of cultivation and experimentation. --Steven Leckart, Cool Tools
Herbs, V22, No3, 1997
....encourages us to bring more diversity into our gardens and diets. Buy one for yourself and one for a friend....
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
100 of 100 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of the handful of books that every gardener (and cook) should have. And I'm a professional gardener with almost 300 gardening books, so I've got more than most to choose from. It wouldn't hurt if some policy makers read it as well.
Ken Fern is a gardening pioneer. He's actually grown not just the dozens of perennial plants in this book, but hundreds more, all of them good to eat or do something useful with, and then shared his favourites.
Most of our food currently comes from a small number of annual plants such as wheat. Nothing wrong with annuals - I wouldn't like to live without tomatoes, or sunflower seeds, or wheat, come to that. But being overdependent on annuals means we have to start growing our crops all over again every year - and that means lots of hard work, and a bigger risk of crop failure in bad conditions. It also means less biomass, far fewer opportunities for other species, and above all far more soil erosion. And of course being dependent on only a few species and varieties is downright dangerous - in the classic example, even though it was made worse by uncaring landowners and politicians, the Irish famine was still originally caused by overdependence on one species and very few varieties.
Ken Fern's book is almost entirely dedicated to perennial species, and a huge diversity of them. His way of growing food means far less work, more resilience and food security, more biomass to absorb carbon dioxide, more wildlife, and almost no soil erosion. Think of fruit trees such as apples, nut trees such as walnuts, or herbs like rosemary and thyme. Think of willows for baskets. But Ken's gone further still, and found plants to give us perennial vegetables, edible flowers, unusual roots and tubers, edible water plants, and much more. The plants are often beautiful as well, so this isn't just utilitarian gardening. One of Ken's favourite edible flowers is the day lily featured on the cover.
There are 47 photos, though far more than 47 plants in the book - but they're excellent photos, and keeping the numbers down means the book's still affordable.
Plants For A Future is well written, too. Reading it is like having a good natter with a friend who just happens to be an expert gardener. (For pedants like me it's a pity the editor didn't stop the use of commas as if they were full stops or semi-colons, but for the sane unpedantic majority this won't matter at all.)
The main text is packed more full of information than most books many times its size, but when you add in the appendices, with all their checklists of plant uses, suggestions for further reading, useful contacts, and much more, Plants For A Future becomes perhaps the single most useful book for the sustainable food grower.
So get this book and get yourself some tasty easy pickings!
And there's always the superb Plants For A Future website, www.pfaf.org, for a taster.
Ken Fern is a gardening pioneer. He's actually grown not just the dozens of perennial plants in this book, but hundreds more, all of them good to eat or do something useful with, and then shared his favourites.
Most of our food currently comes from a small number of annual plants such as wheat. Nothing wrong with annuals - I wouldn't like to live without tomatoes, or sunflower seeds, or wheat, come to that. But being overdependent on annuals means we have to start growing our crops all over again every year - and that means lots of hard work, and a bigger risk of crop failure in bad conditions. It also means less biomass, far fewer opportunities for other species, and above all far more soil erosion. And of course being dependent on only a few species and varieties is downright dangerous - in the classic example, even though it was made worse by uncaring landowners and politicians, the Irish famine was still originally caused by overdependence on one species and very few varieties.
Ken Fern's book is almost entirely dedicated to perennial species, and a huge diversity of them. His way of growing food means far less work, more resilience and food security, more biomass to absorb carbon dioxide, more wildlife, and almost no soil erosion. Think of fruit trees such as apples, nut trees such as walnuts, or herbs like rosemary and thyme. Think of willows for baskets. But Ken's gone further still, and found plants to give us perennial vegetables, edible flowers, unusual roots and tubers, edible water plants, and much more. The plants are often beautiful as well, so this isn't just utilitarian gardening. One of Ken's favourite edible flowers is the day lily featured on the cover.
There are 47 photos, though far more than 47 plants in the book - but they're excellent photos, and keeping the numbers down means the book's still affordable.
Plants For A Future is well written, too. Reading it is like having a good natter with a friend who just happens to be an expert gardener. (For pedants like me it's a pity the editor didn't stop the use of commas as if they were full stops or semi-colons, but for the sane unpedantic majority this won't matter at all.)
The main text is packed more full of information than most books many times its size, but when you add in the appendices, with all their checklists of plant uses, suggestions for further reading, useful contacts, and much more, Plants For A Future becomes perhaps the single most useful book for the sustainable food grower.
So get this book and get yourself some tasty easy pickings!
And there's always the superb Plants For A Future website, www.pfaf.org, for a taster.
42 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book present little-known(mostly perennial) plants for temperate climates with practical uses particularly food. It is a call to rethink our food production to a more ecological model and an essential and technically rich handbook for doing so in your own garden. A readable and enthusiastic collection of information which you won't find so easily anywhere else, and full of things you didn't know.
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fascinating book for anyone who wants their garden to be as edible as possible. His own story is inspiring, and his wonderfully lazy approach to permaculture is refreshing. Much more than a list of plants, my copy of this book has been read cover to cover, and has now become a great reference for whenever I find a corner of my garden which is in need of something new. With information from planting to tasting notes, this book is the one I rely on. Well worth investing in.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
brilliant book
This book is extremely good value for money. I have learnt what you can eat from trees that i didn't know about, and i'm an arborist. Read more
Published 12 months ago by fraser
A Beautiful Future!!
Really a must have book for anyone interested in permaculture, perennial food plants and growing unusual plants. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Charlie Morton
wonderful book
this is a wonderful book, I recommend it highly. Other reviews have already said it all.
Published 24 months ago by P. Miller
Brilliant
I should have bought this book ages ago. I find myself dipping into it all the time and coming back to it again and again when other books let me down! Read more
Published on 10 May 2010 by J. A. Husband
Brilliant, cant put it down!
I recently bought this book as an addition to the earth care manual (which is also very very good). It fills in all the gaps as far as plant choice goes, the book is written in a... Read more
Published on 10 Nov 2009 by Mr. James D. Read
good reference book
inspiring and educational, this book is a good accompaniment to the web site. the book is not an alphabetical listing of plants but rather it has chapters devoted to specific... Read more
Published on 19 Sep 2009 by Fletcher Horobin-worley
A must have
I found the web site and was amazed. I looked around for the book for several months in many places trying to get one at a cheapo rate. Read more
Published on 28 May 2009 by Andrew Mcewen
A powerful book on edible plants
This is a very good and useful book.
It is comparable to the quality of its website. WIth still lots of species, very very useful nature and well-written, down to the point... Read more
It is comparable to the quality of its website. WIth still lots of species, very very useful nature and well-written, down to the point... Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2008 by P. Bessa
Wow I didn't know that was edible!
A wonderful book that provides us with a new view on some of the most common, as well as unusual, plants available to grow in a temperate climate. Read more
Published on 4 Dec 2007 by Steph
Surprisingly a really good book.
I started to read this with the intrepidation it was going to break down into a list of plants, but surprisingly i couldnt be further from the truth. Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2004 by Mr. C. Oliver
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