Recently received, Earth Friendly Gardener John Walker is well-placed to write about organic gardening. The Garden Media Guild environmental award was created for him, and he won it three times.
Be it recycling, peat, pesticide and plastic free, saving water, being weed-friendly and making compost his words and philosophy are well-honed after decades of practice. Now, with a vegan layer on top, Walker details the techniques for growing green in an animal-friendly way. There's simply-explained advice on 'basics' such as tools, soil and making compost. Useful pictures of Walker on his plot, plus illustrations and Shutterstock images make this a well-illustrated book.
The techniques such as no dig and closed loop are clearly explained. There's not too much philosophy, which can get in the way of the practical.
Balancing what to do and what not to do can be problematic in a guide aimed at converting gardeners who may not know much about the subject.
Plant-based or stockfree are probably now the favoured terms, and interestingly, Walker, something of an outsider to the mainstream garden writing community (and all credit to him for that), uses no bibliography and few references to existing old or new literature on the subject.
There's a few anomalies. Closed loops may not include seaweed. Building bug hotels, 'wormpost' and using nematodes might be eschewed by many vegans.
There's a limited amount on what fruit and veg to grow and where to get it from (no veganic nurseries are listed, perhaps deliberately). There's no recipes - no need as there's hundreds of vegan cookbooks out there and only a handful of vegan gardening tomes.
Overall, The Vegan Gardener anchors veganic gardening to more familiar organic gardening ideas, an area where few are better versed than John Walker, who has written an admirable addition to the canon, which needs all the help it can get to reach a wider audience.
