Book Review: Garden your way to health and fitness

This book is declared by the authors to be an 'unprecedented' guide to healthy gardening. Perhaps it is, but the book doesn't provide anything new.

Maybe that's too negative an approach to take - and to be fair, I don't like giving negative reviews of books. For one thing, reading a book means an investment of time - and who would like to admit a wasted investment. However, one of the authors perhaps gives us a warning about this book in her dedication "...who expects little and gets less".

The book is really good for beginners to pilates and / or beginners to gardening. The first couple of chapters deal directly with exercise in an outdoor location, in the case of this book - the garden. The primary method of exercise is pilates, a very good physical fitness discipline. It is easy to see why this method has been chosen, the exercises provided are at the basic end of the spectrum of the pilates method. However, they are succinctly explained and accompanied by excellent photos that clearly show the exercises. I must admit that it is nice to see a book advocating exercise specifically in a garden location.

After the first couple of chapters the book becomes a book of basic gardening concepts. Safe gardening is covered and includes things such as stocking the tool shed. A brief explanation of garden design is provided and is followed by chapters about health and fitness in the ornamental garden and the productive garden. When a technique is discussed in the book, it is followed by photographs showing the right and wrong posture to use to ensure that you don't come off badly. For instance, pruning and lifting large plant pots. The book is a bit contradictory advocating organic while also advising us to use a burner to rid us of our weeds.

This is a very good flick through book. If you haven't exercised for a while or haven't been in the garden, then this book may give you some motivation to get out there and perhaps use your garden in a way you haven't previously. While the ideas in the book aren't original, the idea of putting them together is a nice idea and the photographs of different gardens and ideas. It probably makes the market for the book very niche, but as I got the book from the library it may well be a popular book for such institutions.

Own or Loan:         Loan
Read Again:           No
Recommend:         No
Overall out of Five:2