The Edible Shade Garden

With the right guidance and know-how, growing food in the shade is entirely possible and rewarding. This hardworking guide shows readers exactly how. Shade is one of the biggest reasons many would-be home gardeners don’t grow a food garden. But, with a little shift in mindset, food-bearing shade gardens can be lush, beautiful, and productive—all it takes is selecting shade-friendly crops and applying shade-appropriate techniques that take advantage of your garden's available sunlight. THE EDIBLE SHADE GARDEN is the first to provide expert-driven and accessible tips for growing vegetables, fruit, and herbs in the shade. Longtime gardener and permaculture designer Amy Stross demystifies the challenges of growing food in the shadow of structures like sheds, fences, privacy hedges, forest edges, and mature shade trees that often dominate home landscapes. The book offers detailed shade garden designs that are easily replicable in the home setting, accessible information on soil ecology, a crash course on understanding how to interpret sunlight, and tips for creating a permanent garden ecology where all creatures thrive. And for those of us with sunny gardens who have noticed summers getting hotter every year, THE EDIBLE SHADE GARDEN will encourage gardeners to work with shade as a new climate-adaptive ally.