Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard
“If your garden fantasies involve chickens, Jessi Bloom is here to make those dreams come true.” —The New York Times
Many gardeners fear chickens will peck away at their landscape. But you can keep chickens and have a beautiful garden, too! In this essential handbook, award-winning garden designer Jessi Bloom offers step-by-step instructions for creating a beautiful and functional space while maintaining a happy, healthy flock. Free-Range Chicken Gardens covers everything a gardener needs to know, from the basics of chicken keeping and creating the perfect chicken-friendly garden design to building innovative coops.
Reviews (167)
Nothing Helpful. Vague and Repetitive.
Really disappointed, this is a topic I'm super interested in and hoped to get some nitty-gritty details with long plant lists, tables, schematics, specific rotations for chickens and veggie plants including specifics stages the vegetables are vulnerable. Specific breeds of dogs for guarding, specific tractor designs that are vermin proof...I mean really anything specific would have been helpful. Everything in here I had already surmised myself from general web browsing. Useless book, only buy if you want something colorful for a coffee table.
Love this Book!
My girls tore up the backyard landscaping, so I quarrantined them in their run. Well, that just produced stressed chickens and the egg laying stopped immediately. This book has such great advice! I'm going to follow it and I know, with the help of ideas and commonsense advice from this book, my girls can live a happy life, running free through my gardens and helping me with the most dreaded chores! Bottom line, they're out of the coop, happily gobbling up garden pests and turning over the dirt for me, in preparation for spring planting. Started laying again as soon as they were sprung. I highly recommend buying this book, especially for beginning chicken keepers as I am. It answered so many questions that I had about their care, plus give such great advice on laying out a garden, and great ideas for how to keep them out of the landscaping you want them to stay away from. Plus, the photos are beautiful, the book is an easy read, and the advice simple to follow.
Best Chicken Guide Book
I originally borrowed this book from the library when interested about free ranging my chickens and this book was so loaded with the most valuable and exciting information about raising your chickens almost as backyard pets that can coexist with gardens, children and other pets, I decided to buy it. It covers every topic possible for keeping chickens on properties of all different sizes and with all different backyard styles. If you’re new to keeping chickens or have had them awhile, I’d recommend this book as a great accompaniment to raising happy and healthy chickens.
Not for Desert Chickens
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, or any other geographic location with lots of rain, you might find this book useful. But the basic premise is: If you give your chickens a rainforest in which to forage, they won't do too much damage to any one plant. When you live in a Southern California desert, as I do, you just don't have that kind of greenery to work with. And, the only options left are to permit your birds to obliterate your vegetable patch, or keep them in a coop and run. We're building a run, and I sure wish there was more mention in this book on how to landscape in and around a spacious run. There's a little info on that, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped.
Nice book but fell apart
I do like this book. I’ve only glanced at it and it’s been sitting on my nightstand. I picked it up today to go through it more and the cover came right off. I was gentle with it so it must be a manufacturing issue since it’s happening to others. I don’t regret getting the book. I’ll just look on YouTube on how to glue it back together more secure.
Just what I was looking for
Before reading this book I thought I was the only one who worried about landscaping my chicken run ! While I don't free range or allow my flock to roam through our backyard or garden, I DO plant things in their run to attract bugs, provide shade and make the run more aesthetically pleasing. I figure the nicer it looks the more time I will want to spend there - which is beneficial to both me and my chickens. This book puts all the information I need in one place. No more bookmarking websites of toxic plants, safe plants, etc. I am in the process of planning my landscaping for this spring and this book has been invaluable in that. Its also a gorgeously photographed book, which makes it a joy to flip through. Highly recommended for those who free range as well as those who just want to spruce up their run area a bit safely. Lisa Fresh Eggs Daily Farm Girl [...] [...]
So enjoyable and informative!
I have always wanted chickens and am finally in a place where it could happen. Unfortunately, I don't really know anything about raising them. I found this book,
Fell Apart At The Binding
I was enjoying reading the actual content of the book BUT it fell apart before I even got half way through it. I got the book in the mail yesterday and was excited to get to read it. I was about to page 72 when the whole cover came off and the pages are now starting to separate. I'm VERY disappointed with the books quality.
Great book, terrible binding
This book is amazing! I stayed up way past my bedtime collecting tips and dreaming of my future garden full of beautiful plants and mischievous hens. I got a ton of great ideas plus the pictures were amazing. I want to give this a 5 star review but the binding fell alert in my hands and I haven’t even had this book for 24 hours. I want to carry it around outside but I’m afraid I might start losing pages.
Love it!
Im inspired every time i pick up Chicken Gardens! I really enjoy looking at, as well as reading, this book! I'm a very visual person and enjoy the aesthetic lay out and beautiful puctures in Chicken Gardens. It has helpful information about growing food & herbs for your flock, points to consider when building a coop and thinking about the " style" of chicken keeping ( free range, semi- free range etc) that will suit your lifestyle and space availability and inspiring photographs of a few unique, chicken inspired gardens ( I do wish there were a few more pictures of each of the gardens from different angles & viewpoints though and the reason I gave it only 4 stars). It's lovely to see others who integrate beautiful design elements and care for their birds the way I do. I love this book so much it's sitting on my patio table so I can look through it whenever I get a chance to sit down 😍
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