Lorin Knapp Introduces Native Plants into Home Gardens in New Book

As native plants and birds and other animals that depend upon them gradually decline in number and as their chosen habitats disappear, many of them have begun to live on the edge of survival. What they need are more places where they are welcome and can prosper. Home gardens can be those places when transformed into what could be called a heritage habitat garden. A description of the specifics of that garden style and of the garden methods that have proved to help gardeners introduce native plants into their gardens is the primary focus of A Garden on the Edge, a helpful gardening guide book written by author Lorin Knapp. The book presents an option to at least in part provide an alternative location for native plants whose native habitat has been decreasing in extent while providing a way for gardeners to do their part in helping to preserve native species.

In order to show an example of how a new garden style incorporating native plants can be done in nearly every garden, the story of the evolution of author's own gardens at Windflower Grove has been used for illustration in this book. Growing on the tall grass prairie of central Iowa along a riparian woodland edge, the gardens continue as for the past sixty years to be the author's life work. Many specific methods proven in gardens to work for growing native plants are shared in order to make inclusion of native plants in home gardens a little easier for others.

A Garden on the Edge will help readers appreciate the importance of a garden filled with native plants as it lets both people and wildlife know that they are at home. When native plants and wildlife find new places in which to live in home gardens "these sanctuaries" provide a sense of place unique to that location.

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About the Author
Lorin Knapp has been gardening for more or less sixty years since that time, he has gardened at what are now known as the gardens at Windflower Grove. These gardens are at the edge of what was once a riparian (stream side) woodland in central Iowa and were the site of his boyhood home. From early years and forward, flowers have always been of special interest to him whether in the gardens or growing on their own. That interest also led to writing garden book reviews for a gardening magazine. Other writing for local newspapers and for economic studies reflects an academic background that includes two degrees including an MBA from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. After a tour of duty in Vietnam, the focus in his home gardens was conversion to herbicide- and pesticide-free gardening. Knowledge gained about gardening without herbicides and pesticides over a period of several decades became a cornerstone of the methods useful when growing native plants. Although not always living on the site of the gardens at Windflower Grove, Lorin helped and later took responsibility for the care of the gardens. He and his wife now live on the property with the gardens in a home built over thirty years ago.

A Garden on the Edge * by Lorin Knapp
Creating a Heritage Habitat Garden
Publication Date: May 31, 2013
Trade Paperback; $19.99; 139 pages; 978-1-4836-4584-1
Trade Hardback; $29.99; 139 pages; 978-1-4836-4585-8
eBook; $3.99; 978-1-4836-4586-5

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For more information on self-publishing or marketing with Xlibris, visit http://www.Xlibris.com. To receive a free publishing guide, please call (888) 795-4274.

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