The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A-Z: 1 [Illustrated] [Paperback]

The Alternative Kitchen Garden is, according to author Emma Cooper, an evolving idea of what a kitchen garden could be in the twenty first century organic, environmentally sustainable, resilient and about relocalising at least some of our food production. Its also a place not only for learning and practising growing skills but for enjoying ourselves and having fun. There are many incarnations across the globe, but Emma s particular Alternative Kitchen Garden came into being in 2001 when she and her husband bought a new home in Oxfordshire and decided to grow a few pots of herbs on the patio. A self confessed cyber geek, she began to document the transformation of her ropey old lawn with potholes and brambles into a fertile and abundant permaculture plot via internet radio and a popular blog site. Eight years on her postings and stories have been collected in this fascinating volume, illustrated with beautiful colour photos and arranged into easily accessible alphabetical order. Covering subjects as diverse as growing achocha (a lost Inca crop) to zucchinis, and forest gardening to xeriscaping, Emma's style is light and friendly yet at the same time informative and based on personal experience you feel you could actually be sitting in the garden chatting face to face as she shares her knowledge and experience, especially when she veers off into non directly garden related tangents such as osteopathy and freecycling. A dual purpose book a concise and valuable practical guide, but at the same time a lovely little read for the deck chair or hammock! --Graham Burnett, Permaculture Magazine 61

If you are new to growing food, relax and enjoy this book: It brings together the many spokes of growing edibles into one hub, drawing together techniques, processes and concepts, pleasures and possibilities, experiences and insights without sparing the failures. This is gardening as a whole and as it should be. If you are already converted, rest assured that this stream of thoughts and experiences, exciting ideas and fascinating facts make The Alternative Kitchen Garden a book to grow with, in all senses. There s a lot of talk at the moment that this, now, is the time to grow your own, but what we are seeing is a more enduring reconnection and fascination with what we eat. Since the 1950s, we have seen the wider population who used to grow at least a little of what they ate fall by the wayside (though allotmenteers and kitchen gardeners have never gone away). Undoubtedly our obsession with saving time and the availability of cheap food has played a key part in this, but the tendency of some garden writers to cloak the pleasure of growing in endless jargon, to dress up complex techniques as critical and create an expert/novice divide has done little to encourage and inspire. Happily Emma is helping to put this to rights. It is one thing to do , quite another, as Emma does, to multiply the value of doing by enthusing, inspiring, encouraging and enabling. Through her website, blogging, podcasts and now this book, Emma beautifully conveys the simultaneous inconsequentiality and enormity of growing: Planting a tree, while a matter of hole-digging and backfilling, engages us with our cultural heritage and becomes an opportunity for creativity and expression, as well as offering a gift to the future. And as you d expect if you're familiar with Emma's work, it's a generous book, linking people, organisations and the reader throughout, joining the dots as it goes. Many books present the reader with what feels like a mountain to climb. Emma s gift is in breaking down barriers, inviting us into the resulting space and presenting numerous ingenious opportunities to fill it. What and how we do this is up to each individual. Now I'm off to sow some quinoa. --Mark Diacono, from the Foreword, is author of Veg Patch River Cottage Handbook No.4

Emma Cooper is an unstoppable force, one of life's positive people, and The Alternative Kitchen Garden sets out her inspiring personal vision of how to grow your own. --Emma Townsend, Independent on Sunday gardening columnist

An indispensable compendium for a new generation of eco-conscious kitchen gardeners: Elspeth Thompson, The Sunday Telegraph gardening columnist The Alternative Kitchen Garden is an evolving idea of what a kitchen garden could be in the twenty first century organic, environmentally sustainable, resilient and about relocalising at least some of our food production. Its also a place not only for learning and practising growing skills but for enjoying ourselves and having fun. Both an ideal companion for anyone getting dirt under their fingernails for the first time and full fascinating ideas and experiments for the adventurous gardener. A self confessed 'cyber geek', Emma began to document the transformation of her ropey old lawn with potholes and brambles into a fertile and abundant permaculture plot via internet radio and a popular blog site. Eight years on her postings and stories have been collected in here, illustrated with beautiful colour photographs and arranged into easily accessible alphabetical order. Covering subjects as diverse as growing achocha (a lost Inca crop) to zucchinis Emma s style is light and friendly yet at the same time informative and based on personal experience you feel you could actually be sitting in the garden chatting face to face as she shares her knowledge and experience, especially when she veers off into non directly garden related tangents such as osteopathy and freecycling. A concise and valuable practical guide, and a lovely read that you can also dip in and out of. Emma Cooper is an unstoppable force, one of life s positive people, and The Alternative Kitchen Garden sets out her inspiring personal vision of how to grow your own: Emma Townshend, The Independent on Sunday gardening columnist

Emma Cooper lived a very uneventful life until she met her husband, Pete. She went to The University of Birmingham, earned a degree (a BSc (Hons) in Physics and Astrophysics), and then started a string of office jobs of an increasingly computery nature. At one of those jobs she bumped into Pete, and together they have embarked on a journey towards a greener lifestyle. It started off relatively simply, making good use of the local recycling collections and moving towards organic food. In 2001 they bought a house, and Emma wandered out into the garden and planted a few herbs and vegetables in pots on the patio merely to cut down on the family Food Miles. She soon developed a towering obsession with edible plants and is on a quest to grow them all, from the humble spud to the exotic achocha and beyond. Over the past 8 years, Emma's garden has developed from an unloved urban back yard into an edible paradise, albeit a rather untidy one. Because this is a place where wildlife is welcome and nothing grows in straight lines. Pete is normally quite happy to leave the gardening to his wife, although he has made a few contributions of his own most notably building the Grow Dome, installing several large water butts and insisting on chickens. Princess Layer and Hen Solo arrived in 2006 and happily munch their way through more than their fair share of the home grown veggies, plus the occasional slug when Emma insists. In the autumn of 2006, Pete left the world of air-conditioned offices and vending machine coffee to work from home. He seemed to be having so much fun doing it that Emma joined him early in 2007. Since then she has had far more time to spend in the garden, although it s a shame that it has coincided with two of the worst possible growing seasons of recent years! And although there s not as much spare cash to spend on gardening goodies, it doesn t matter making the garden more self-sufficient has been huge amounts of fun and very rewarding. When she s not in the garden, Emma can be found huddled over a gardening book from her over-stuffed bookshelf, or in front of the computer. Emma writes about environmentally friendly gardening, keeps a regular online diary (blog) about her gardening exploits and green issues and records a (fairly) regular online radio show called The Alternative Kitchen Garden, which draws its audience from all over the world.