How to Make a Forest Garden Book

I finally recently read this book after it had been recommended by several other people and then had been sitting on my shelf for several months waiting for me to have the time. Perhaps it is because it was so talked up by others, but I found it to be somewhat of a letdown from what I was expecting. Part of it is that a lot of the general growing information contained within it will already be things that people involved in organic growing, permaculture, and/or biodynamic growing are likely to already be doing - quite possibly by simply intuiting the idea on their own without even having it suggested by anyone else, as many of the things just plain make sense to anyone with any knowledge at all of any of these growing techniques - and part of it is that, being targeted towards Britain, so much of the information contained within it just doesn't apply to growing conditions of most gardens here in the US.

Additionally, Whitefield's professed hatred of blueberries - saying that they are one of the blandest fruits he's ever tasted, and has difficulty imagining why anyone would want to grow them - meant that I felt that I couldn't trust his opinions of any of the unusual crops that I've never grown before, and his only citing British-relevant information on whether things are, for example, native or invsaive, meant that I'd have to do a lot of my own legwork before even contemplating growing anything I wasn't already familiar with, just to make sure that it wasn't invsaive here, was hardy here, etc. etc. I don't really see very much point in reading gardening books that give me much more homework to do instead of helping me figure things out. I can only recommend this book to those that are truly new to the world of organics/permaculture/biodynamics, and even then, I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone that doesn't live in Britain.