Home Solar Gardening. Rev. ed.

Pleasance Crawford, a Canadian landscape and garden history researcher
and writer, is the editor of Landscape Architectural Review.

This “completely revised and updated” edition of a 1981 book of the
same title comes from a teacher of botany and horticulture with 50
years’ experience designing, building, and managing home greenhouses.
John Pierce has brought his original text, data, resources, and
bibliography up to date, and has even provided his address in
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, for readers with further questions.

The book is about using the sun’s energy, plus a structure Pierce
loosely terms a solar grower, to extend the outdoor gardening season.
Prefabricated greenhouses or other freestanding structures, lean-tos,
garden rooms, sun pits, frames, boxes, and cloches are all solar
growers, and he discusses and illustrates strategies for constructing,
insulating, and managing each type, with the latest materials and
technologies. He covers both passive and active solar systems.

The text is full of helpful information. The black-and-white drawings
and diagrams are easy to understand. Resource lists for Canada, the
United States, and the United Kingdom, plus a select bibliography, lead
the reader to organizations of solar growers, manufacturers of solar
products, and sources of additional information.