Rebel Gardening: A Beginner's Handbook to Creating an Organic Urban Garden

Rebel Gardening is an enthusiastic and up to the minute guide for urban gardeners written by Alessandro Vitale. Due out 11th April 2023 from Watkins Publishing, it's 272 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

In times of increasing food insecurity and distrust/boredom with the incredibly limited selections available to most people who live in urban areas, coupled with the psychological and health benefits of being in contact with growing plants and having more control over our food as well as the sense of accomplishment that comes from being more self sufficient, it's easy to see why more people are making a conscious choice to garden. People in urban areas face more challenges finding space to grow anything as well as challenges associated with water and light conditions. This book gives a lot of really creative solutions to those problems (and more).

The focus throughout is on regenerative and supportive gardening; to heal the planet, support life (including our own), and improve food security. There is such a wealth of experience and information contained in the volume that doesn't fit into precise pigeonholes. The author has included links to his social media presence at the very beginning of the book so that readers can see videos of the techniques he talks about. He is also a supporter of open pollinated heirloom (non-hybrid) seeds and promotes the use of organic controls, no dig beds, JADAM techniques, and permaculture. It's also incredibly enthusiastic and the author's passion about gardening comes through very clearly in the text.

The book is well photographed (many are stock photos, but they are clear and illustrate the plants and techniques well).

Four and a half stars. Full of information. This would be a superlative choice for public and school library acquisition, home use, allotments/gardening groups, smallholders (with or without urban locations), and similar. The language and spelling are UK English (marrow, aubergine, etc), but will pose no problems in context for readers elsewhere. Tutorial and recipe lists have measurements given in metric units with imperial (American) units in parentheses (yay!).

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.