A Patch of Eden: America's Inner-City Gardeners

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This is the delightful story of the resurgence in urban community gardening, describing the rehabilitation of jail inmates through raising organic vegetables, teaching inner city youngsters where food comes from, and laying out an inspirational plan to help all of us world-worn urbanites get involved once again in raising delicious food in the midst of our paved-over, formerly bleak, urban landscapes. This is about making the World a Better Place, about getting our fingers in the dirt, touching our planet with loving hands, and creating a vision of hope for our cities and our children.

Urban Eden: Grow Delicious Fruit, Vegetables and Herbs in a Really Small Space

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Organic gardening in tiny spaces
What a breath of fresh air

Urban Eden: Grow Delicious Fruit, Vegetables and Herbs in a Really Small Space
Adam Caplin , and James Caplin
Manufacturer: Kyle Cathie Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Vegetables | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers
The Edible Container Garden: Growing Fresh Food in Small Spaces
You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening
Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers: Using Ed's Amazing POTS System
Small Spaces, Beautiful Gardens

ASIN: 1856265013

Book Description

The perfect book for any gardener with a tiny space ‹ whether roof top, terrace, or window box ‹ Urban Eden shows how to create a place where flowers, foliage, fruit, vegetables, and herbs intermingle and flourish.

Customer Reviews:

Organic gardening in tiny spaces.......2006-07-09

If you want to grow your own food, but don't have any space, this is the book for you. Even though it's set in the UK, and I live in Australia, I found plenty of ideas that I was able to use to successfully grow food in a 2 square metre plot behind my house. There are lots of different options shown (eg rooftop, indoors, balcony, pots), with lots of colour photographs. I liked that there was a focus on design as well- not only should the area be productive, it should look attractive.

What a breath of fresh air.......2003-01-06

Living in a small space with no bed to call my own I picked up this book and read it. It was wonderful! Lots of information on gardening specifically for the urban dweller. The photographs were wonderful, as was the writing. Included information on raised beds, regular beds, container gardening, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and anything else the city dweller might want to grow. Also included really interesting information on pollution and its effects on the urban dweller's garden and information on pests and what can be done to control them. There was also a heavy influence of organic gardening and how this might be done in the city.

Book Description

In 1930 the Olmsted Brothers and Harland Bartholomew & Associates submitted a report, "Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region," to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. After a day or two of coverage in the newspapers, the report dropped from sight. The plan set out a system of parks and parkways, children's playgrounds, and public beaches. It is a model of ambitious, intelligent, sensitive planningcommissioned at a time when land was available, if only the city planners had had the fortitude and vision to act on its recommendations.
"Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches" has become a highly valued but difficult-to-find document. In this book, Greg Hise and William Deverell examine the reasons it was called for, analyze why it failed, and open a discussion about the future of urban public space. In addition to their introduction and a facsimile reproduction of the report, Eden by Design includes a dialogue between Hise, Deverell, and widely admired landscape architect Laurie Olin that illuminates the significance of the Olmsted-Bartholomew report and situates it in the history of American landscape planning.

Customer Reviews:

Remarkable Foresight.......2002-07-11

It's true that the maps are often too small and would be better in color, as the originals are. However, the reprints are far from illegible, and the text of the Olmsted-Bartholomew proposal is captivating in and of itself.

I was fascinated to read the astute predictions of these men of vision, and their thoughtful proposals for increasing the quality of life for Angelenos. I remarked at the urgency of their recommendations; they seem to genuinely fear the social consequences of allowing a city to grow with inadequate space reserved for recreation and natural beauty.

If only we could know what L.A. would have been if the plan had been adopted!

Reprinted maps are dark, and hard to read........2000-05-26

This reprint of "The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholemew Plan for the Los Angeles Region" is more exactly a low-quality copy. The maps are so dark they are very difficult to read, and the way they are bound into the book, much of the details are lost into the seams. The original maps were color, so any references to colors in the legends are lost, and the gray scales blended together make the maps even less articulate. It's important that a document such as this is reprinted for all to see, but it seems as if this volume has missed an opportunity of becoming a library keepsake.

Edens Lost & Found: How Ordinary Citizens Are Restoring Our Great American Cities

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Edens Lost & Found: How Ordinary Citizens Are Restoring Our Great American Cities
Harry Wiland , and Dale Bell
Manufacturer: Chelsea Green
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America
Groundswell: Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community
Green Urbanism: Learning From European Cities
Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice
Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance With Nature

ASIN: 1933392266

Book Description

With Edens Lost & Found, award-winning filmmakers Harry Wiland and Dale Bell herald an exciting sea change in the relationship between ordinary citizens, environmental groups, and government. From across America they gather evidence of a new spirit of cooperation among neighbors, planners, architects and builders, city officials, and government agencies. Indeed, as urban issues have become undeniably urgent problems that demand answers, people from disparate backgrounds and political leanings are joining forces to recast life in American cities. As citizens take action where government has failed, they are finding support, encouragement, and help from their neighbors. Conversely, as progressive-minded government agencies and organizations explore nontraditional solutions, an energized community rallies to the cause. Neither exclusively top-down, nor grass roots, we are in the midst of an unprecedented movement that unites efforts from every quarter in a common cause. Focusing on Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle-four cities that face vastly different challenges-Edens Lost & Found highlights the remarkable power of hope, pride, ingenuity, and chutzpah that characterize this era of collaboration. Bioengineering concepts-now increasingly understood by many to offer the most effective, cost-efficient solutions-are playing a central role. Working with-rather than in opposition to-nature is leading to such innovations as rooftop and urban gardens, restored parks, transformed vacant lots, the re-greening of city streets, and eco-friendly watershed management. Edens Lost & Found shows how working to reshape the land also transforms the relationships people have to one another.

The Struggle for Eden: Community Gardens in New York City

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The Struggle for Eden: Community Gardens in New York City
Malve von Hassell
Manufacturer: Bergin & Garvey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Landscape | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0897898583

Book Description

This study is a portrayal of the political, economic, and cultural history and present of community gardens in a New York City neighborhood, the Lower East Side of Manhattan. An ethnographic study of a particular instance of urban history, it provides a basis for an understanding of urban community gardens in the United States. Beginning with a historical overview of urban community gardening in the United States and other countries, the author concentrates on the last two decades of the 20th century in this portrayal of a social movement that seeks to impact urban environments both in social and economic terms and in terms of ecological dynamics. The last decade in particular has been critical with regard to the development of a broad network of community-based coalitions acting on behalf of urban community gardens. The author considers internal dynamics and organization of individual gardens within the specific social, political, and economic context of the Lower East Side and analyzes the political struggle on behalf of community gardens in that neighborhood and the entire city. The author also addresses the diverse ways in which community gardens on the Lower East Side have become critical components in the daily life of urban gardeners, predominantly poor and low-income people.

Among the Mansions of Eden: Tales of Love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills

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Best Book of it's Kind
A Great Real Estate History of Beverly Hills
Among the Mansions of Eden
Be Careful What You Ask For
Hilarious and Revealing

Among the Mansions of Eden: Tales of Love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills
David Weddle
Manufacturer: William Morrow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny
Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten
Early Beverly Hills (Images of America)
Dancing at Ciro's: A Family's Love, Loss, and Scandal on the Sunset Strip
Beverly Hills, 1930-2005 (CA) (Images of America)

ASIN: 0060198176
Release Date: 2003-03-18

Book Description

Among the Mansions of Eden is a fascinating and dishy exploration of Beverly Hills -- a rarefied community that has become a part of our country's mythos, a city renowned for its ostentatious displays of wealth. It takes you behind the gates of the rich and famous for an insider's view of the elite's rapturous and tragic attempts to realize the American Dream.

From Rodeo Drive to Beverly Hills High School, Among the Mansions of Eden tells the city's story by capturing the individuals who are emblematic of various factions of Beverly Hills society: The cast of unforgettable characters includes the late Milton Berle, who spent his last days surrounded by aging cronies in the cavernous ballroom of the Friars Club, haunted by the ghosts of the past; Fred Hayman, a former banquet manager who opened a boutique called Giorgio and transformed Rodeo Drive from a provincial retail district to a phantasmagoric midway that caters to the world's most affluent shoppers; Gavin de Becker, a poor kid from a broken home who became the security broker to the stars; Mark Hughes, the health-supplement wunderkind who parlayed a trunkful of vitamin pills into a billion-dollar empire known as Herbalife and planned to build his own San Simeon on the last undeveloped mountaintop in Beverly Hills; Jim Forester, a teenager with an overriding passion for a righteous buzz that led him on a Dante-esque journey through the city's underworld of pushers, delinquents, scam artists, and sleazoids; and Norm Zadeh, who used the millions he made as a hedge-fund manager to start a girlie magazine, fill a Beverly Hills mansion with curvaceous nymphets, and emulate the life of Hugh Hefner.

You'll also meet a fascinating array of con artists, hucksters, and libido-crazed pleasure seekers and gun fetishists who are willing to resort to whatever means necessary to steal a piece of the Beverly Hills Dream. Among the Mansions of Eden weaves their individual stories into a spellbinding tale of wealth, fame, and the lust for land, power, and social status in the most opulent city in America.

Customer Reviews:

Best Book of it's Kind.......2005-07-29

I've read a lot of these "tell all" books and David Weddle's is by far the most impressive. He's a great story teller- expertly weaving the past with the present in a style that is both baudy and touching at the same time. I found myself rereading certain paragraphs that were so well crafted and yet completely serving to that particular anecdote. There is no wasted space in this book (read the first 30 pages and you probably know more than the average citizen whose spent their entire life there).
This book wasn't written in a day- and it shows. Well done.

A Great Real Estate History of Beverly Hills.......2003-08-02

Originally born in California, I travel often to Los Angeles on business and pleasure and enjoy looking at Westside real estate and staying at the Peninsula Hotel. While this book limits it's history to Beverly Hills leaving out other interesting areas like Bel Air, it does a magnificent job of summarizing the history of 90210 as well as chronologically tracing the changes in the city.

Some of the significant stories that I liked were the history of the original developer, the influx of what were considered lower status people, ie, actors, the history of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Arab influence in the 1970s and the changing retail environment of the Golden Triangle. This book also has some great pictures. My personal favorite was the BH Hotel with massive empty land all around. If you've been by in the last 30 years you know how weird empty land appears.

This book also devotes a chapter to a Howard Hefner wannabe who started Perfect 10 magazine. Beverly Hills definitely attracts beautiful women, many of whom are looking for a way to live in the mansions. Also, there is a great chapter on the founder of Herbalife who came from nothing to own a great old mansion while planning to build a 40,000 sq. foot mansion. One year later, he's dead.

If you want a history of Beverly Hills and what it is like to live there, this is the perfect book.

Among the Mansions of Eden.......2003-05-22

Mr. Weddle is our Virgil taking us on a tour of some of the poshest circles in the world. Lifting the curtain he allows us access to a world we can only dream about, to discover a nightmare world of bloated egos as well as bankbooks, that sadly proves ephemeral. Intriguing, eye-opening and fun!

Be Careful What You Ask For.......2003-05-20

As a twenty-year resident of Beverly Hills, I found Among the Mansions of Eden fascinating. It's the first book I've read that actually talks about what happens here. Throughout his investigation into the checkered history of Beverly Hills, Weddle's wry pen skewers a series of what seem to be over-the-top archetypes, but by the time he's finished, he's deftly revealed them as very human beings driven by understandable demons. I expect his penetrating look into the drug scene and quiet racism of this town to draw intense criticism, but his observations match my first-hand knowledge. And his observations concerning the corrosive effects of too much "success" resonated long after I put the book down.

Hilarious and Revealing.......2003-05-20

I found "Among the Mansions of Eden" to be a hilarious and riveting study of the rich who go to Beverly Hills to build their personal monuments. David Weddle lays bare the fallacy of materialism. He does this not by simply ridiculing the materialists--though god knows they ask for it--but by getting inside their heads and understanding their doomed aspirations. He sees that materialism is a romantic impulse, heartfelt and desperate. The wealthy erect their impossibly oversized palaces in the hope that they can build a perfect world and thus bring grace and contentment to their lives. By looking to the outside world and material achievement instead if within for fulfillment they of course end up failing, but do so spectacularly.

This book is full of unforgettable characters: greedy real estate hustlers, aging movie stars, porno kings who aspire to emulate Hugh Hefner, Iranian refugees who arrived in Beverly Hills with millions of dollars stuffed in their pockets, high school druggies, body guards to the stars and snake oil salesmen who struck it big through infomercials. It is not just about the wealthy, but all of us who are endlessly fascinated by their outrageous exploits. It is about one version of the American Dream that Beverly Hills has come to represent--a twisted and corrosive dream but one that has a everlasting hold on the American imagination.

Audubon Park: An Urban Eden
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Audubon Park: An Urban Eden
L. Ronald Forman , and Joseph Logsdon
Manufacturer: Audubon Park Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Midwest | State & Local | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0961203846

Dutch Realist
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Dutch Realist
Karelse Van der Meer
Manufacturer: NAI Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Architects, A-Z | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Drawing & Modelling | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9056624059

Book Description

This monograph of the architecture bureau De Zwarte Hond (The Black Dog) presents a comprehensive overview of realized and unbuilt projects by the office, formerly called Karelse Van der Meer Architecten. De Zwarte Hond is a large and wide-ranging bureau with branches in Groningen and Rotterdam, and has one of most extensive and eclectic portfolios of built projects in the Netherlands. The bureau is unique in its down-to-earth design mentality that is inspired by the conviction that the best design is the result of a thorough study of task, program, and context. The book concentrates on the design process and the resulting solutions for a series of projects within recent years. This focus on 'process' and 'result' is approached in two ways: on one hand, by means of a substantial reflection on their methodology in which craftsmanship and research are at least as important as the end result; on the other hand, by means of a complete overview of all 500 projects in their extensive archive. Between reflection and the archive lies a concise chronology that traces the history and evolution of the bureau over the years. Essays by Catja Edens and Jeroen de Willigen. Hardcover, 9 x 11 in./224 pgs / 60 color, 240 b&w and 11 duotones.

Regulating Eden: The Nature of Order in North American Parks

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Regulating Eden: The Nature of Order in North American Parks
Joe Hermer
Manufacturer: University of Toronto Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Public Affairs & Administration | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

National Parks | Canada | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0802043585

Book Description

State and Provincial Parks are represented as inherently natural places set apart from the disorder of everyday life, places that are intrinsically 'wild' and must be protected. Yet, in order to experience the naturalness and freedom of the parks, we must embrace the very forms of regulation that we closely associate with places we consider to be artificial, restrictive, and alienating.

Drawing on a wide range of documents used to govern park jurisdictions, Joseph Hermer explores the character and consequences of the contradiction posed by the 'regulated Eden' of park destinations. Central to his analysis of parks as historically specific sites of governance is the notion of 'emparkment,' the practises and discourses that manufacture wildness and nature through specific forms of spatial and temporal regulation.

Using theoretical literature from the sociology of law and cultural geography, Hermer argues that emparkment order is driven primarily through discourses of both personal and environmental risk and results in an interdependency that generates powerful moralizing effects. He suggests that the mode of power constituted by emparkment is a mirror not only of how nature is configured in an era of environmental toxification, but also of how the experience of freedom itself is constructed in a society frequently characterized as repressive. Challenging us to re-think the place we have given to 'nature' in the protection of ecologically valuable landscapes, Hermer urges us to consider, too, the forms by which we govern ourselves in the moral order of daily life.

URBAN EDEN: GROW DELICIOUS FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND HERBS IN A REALLY SMA
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URBAN EDEN: GROW DELICIOUS FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND HERBS IN A REALLY SMA
Adam Caplin
Manufacturer: Publisher Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000WQZWF0

Customer Reviews:

Printed Without Permission.......2006-06-24

As touching and lovely as this book may be, it consists of material printed without permission from the original writers, and that is just wrong. I was shocked when an acquaintance told me that they'd read something of mine IN THIS BOOK. I was never contacted or compensated for the use of my words.

Great Gift Book.......2001-12-31

This is a lovely little gift book for adoptive families highlighting the special relationships forged through adoption. It even comes with a small silver-plated heart charm that can be used as a bookmark or on a bracelet or necklace. I've ordered several now for my adoptive children and for my friends who are adoptive parents. It's a wonderful small treasure.

For All Adoptive Parents!.......2000-09-14

I found this little book moving and inspirational. Who would have known the range of people who were adopted or who are adoptive parents. This book makes a great gift for my friends who are thinking of adopting, and older adopted children. It is full of warmth and love, and quite intellectual and wide ranging in its material. What a great contribution to the boggling array of adoption books out there.

Adoption is another word for love.......2000-08-01

This is a lovely book to give as a gift to friends or family with adopted children and to all of your children themselves. The fact that the entries are written by those who have had the experience of being adopted or of being the adopting parent sends an arrow straight to the heart. It validates the feelings of those of us who have an adopted child in our life.

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