Promoting a holistic ecological view, Tammi Hartung encourages you to invite wildlife into your garden. You’ll be amazed at how a variety of natural pollinators, pest predators, and soil enrichers can promote vibrant and healthy vegetables. Discover how a slug problem disappears once you’ve introduced a pond housing bullfrogs, how wasps can take care of tomato hornworms, and why skunks aren’t so bad after all. Learn how to garden with animals, rather than against them, and reap your most bountiful harvest yet.  Anyone who has ever planted and maintained a backyard vegetable garden understands the struggles of keeping pests at bay, whether they’re tiny and creep on six legs or furry and walk on all fours. The good news, which internationally renowned herbalist and organic gardener Hartung shares in this easy-to-follow guidebook, is that an abundance of time-tested, nontoxic techniques can easily protect your garden without causing undue harm to wildlife. In eight colorfully illustrated chapters, Hartung offers a range of invaluable strategies for designing gardens that keep the critters out without hurting them, such as borders of parsley that rabbits will munch on instead of lettuce, and built-in, bird-friendly habitats that encourage our winged friends to feed on bothersome bugs. Beginning with proper soil preparation, the author also covers such basics as crop rotation, water sources, whether or not to use organic pesticides, and growing “backbone” plants like hedgerows where beneficial creatures can nest. Novice and expert vegetable growers alike will find Hartung’s well-presented advice both revelatory and warmly reassuring. --Carl Hays "Novice and expert vegetable growers alike will find Hartung’s well-presented advice both revelatory and warmly reassuring." ― Phoenix Home & Garden "Hartung issues a call for gardeners to work with varmints and critters rather than view them as hostile combatants and offers a delightful guide for how to undertake the challenge simply and organically." ― Better Homes & Gardens Country Gardens "Easy to read and colorfully illustrated with charming drawings, this title will inspire you to get your hands dirty and to rethink your relationship with nature." ― Bookpage " The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener is part how-to book, and part philosophical treatise on life, imploring us to 'embrace imperfection and impermanence, and maybe even a bit of chaos at times, as part of working with natural processes.' No matter what you're doing, this is sage advice." ― The Napa Valley Register "Tammi Hartung offers smart strategies for peaceful garden coexistence...Gardeners can design a wildlife-friendly garden, all with one beautifully illustrated book." "From her successful organic herb farm, Tammi Hartung has learned that edible plants can be grown in harmony with wildlife. Her message is not that everything wild is good, but that we can tolerate it all without turning our gardens into a killing field. By carefully observing not just the individual plants but the entire ecosystem in which they grow, we can better appreciate all the roles that wildlife play in our gardens." "Lovingly, sweetly, intelligently, the book opens up new physical and spiritual ground, on which our gardens will grow best on account of the presence of insects and animals, not in spite of them. From the management of manure to proper protection from real pests, no garden stone is left unturned." "One of the most charming new gardening books is The Wildlife-Friendliy Vegetable Gardener " "Into a world of shrinking habitat and increasing concern about food safety comes a book that addresses both concerns, allowing readers to construct and maintain vegetable gardens that help preserve our population of native insects, butterflies, and birds." Tammi Hartung is the author of Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine , Homegrown Herbs, and The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener . She has been growing and working with herbs for more than 40 years and is a frequent teacher and lecturer. She and her husband cultivate more than 1800 varieties of herbs, heirloom food plants, and perennial seed crops on their organic farm in Colorado.