Front Yard Gardens

Book cover: Front Yard Gardens. (SHNS photo courtesy A Firefly Book)

Front Yard Gardens, By Liz Primeau. Firefly, $24.95.

This isn't just a gardening book. It's a manifesto against the pervasive use of grass as the primary garden element on suburban front lawns. It's an extended essay about the history of the modern lawn and the environmental consequences of maintaining a thirsty plant like grass that inevitably requires a myriad of herbicides and pesticides.

Front-yard gardens, on the other hand, create ecosystems within themselves, Primeau argues, and attracts the birds and the butterflies that make a garden thrive. She provides more than 200 photographs of examples, where lawns were ripped up and replaced with free-flowing, more environmentally friendly (and prettier) plants.