The avid gardener will need no other resource than this book to plan and maintain a natural garden on the country farm or in the suburban backyard, a habitat congenial to the scarlet tanager, the monarch butterfly, and the toad.

Unique to this book is author Beresford-Kroeger's concept of bioplanning, in which the gardener views the site as a biological system and the activity of gardening as an ecological task. To assist in bioplanning a garden, the author provides both plans that are adaptable to different garden sizes and shapes, as well as planting instructions emphasizing organic care, ecofunction, and environmentally friendly means of pest control.

A Garden for Life challenges everyone to create an ecologically valuable garden for the joy of doing so, and for the salvation of our natural world.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is the author of Arboretum America. She is a botanist, medical and agricultural researcher, lecturer, and self-defined "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry. She lives in Ontario, Canada.