I am now considered by many as the expert on creating allergy-free and allergy-friendly gardens and landscapes. I have lectured on the subject all across the US and Canada, and also in Israel, Ireland, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. For 30+ years now I’ve been researching the connections between urban landscaping and allergies and asthma. My articles have appeared in dozens of fine publications, including The New York Times, The London Times, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Atlas Obscura, Scientific American, Der Spiegel, and The New Scientist. I have owned two nurseries and taught horticulture for twenty years.
I wrote...
The Allergy-Fighting Garden: Stop Asthma and Allergies with Smart Landscaping
Many allergies (and asthma) are homegrown…caused by plants growing right in your own yards. Learn which choices are the most allergy-free, and which are the worst. Thousands of trees, grasses, ground covers, vines, and shrubs are included…and all are ranked 1-10 (where 1 is the best, and 10 is the worst, the most allergenic. Used by hundreds of cities worldwide.
This is the best book on medical botany. The authors are both top experts on biology and botany, and among his peers in biology, Walter H. Lewis is known as the medical botanist. Just packed with interesting, useful information not found anywhere else. Widely used as a university textbook for medical botany…but extremely readable. Highly recommended!
Plants as Medicine.... A Natural Approach to Self-Health Medical Botany: Plants Affecting Man?s Health, Walter H. Lewis, Memory P.F. Elvin-Lewis
Medical Botany is a fascinating look at the facts and fictions surrounding plants and man?not only which plants affect our bodies, but how they affect them. Authoritative, rich in anecdote and lore, lavishly illustrated, this encyclopedic reference brings within your reach the curative, healing, poisonous, allergenic, and psychoactive properties of thousands of plants. Its ready reference format allows you to turn instantly to information about a specific plant?s properties, its history, its use in orthodox medicine (where applicable) and its…
Edited by Matilda van den Bosch and William Bird, Nature and Public Health. Each chapter was written by several top experts in the field. There were more than a hundred different experts chosen to write sections of this fine book, selected from all around the world of health, botany, horticulture, urban forestry, urban affairs, and the environment. Nature (or the lack of it) is closely aligned with human health, and this wonderful book explores the subject like no other.
Human beings have always been affected by their surroundings. There are various health benefits linked to being able to access to nature; including increased physical activity, stress recovery, and the stimulation of child cognitive development. The Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health provides a broad and inclusive picture of the relationship between our own health and the natural environment. All aspects of this unique relationship are covered, ranging from disease prevention through physical activity in green spaces to innovative ecosystem services, such as climate change adaptation by urban trees. Potential hazardous consequences are also discussed including natural disasters, vector-borne…
Airborne and Allergenic Pollen of North America was the most important book I read (out of hundreds) when I was doing my original research for my own book. The material is extensive, accurate, scientific, and yet it is quite readable. Unlike so many other books, papers, or articles on pollen and allergy, this book takes into consideration all of the plants grown in North America, not just the trees. A classic, and yet, still the very best.
I own hundreds of books on plants and trees. The two finest books written on American trees were both written by Donald Culross Peattie. His book on Western trees is amazing. When he looks at and writes about a particular tree, he mentions everything about it. What it looks like, where it grows, how big it gets, what it is used for, what animals, birds, insects use this tree. He also mentions in detail how it flowers, sets seeds, grows….he misses next to nothing. Totally recommended!
A lovely reprint of Peattie's 1950 classic with the fine wood engravings and a new (4 page) introduction by Robert Finch. This editio printed on alkaline paper. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America by author and naturalist Donald Culross Peattie is probably the very best book on trees that I have ever read. I used this book (and also his book on Western trees) as a marvelous resource when I was working on my books.
I learned many a new thing from this book, things I could not find in books written by botanists or horticulturists. This in large part is because Peattie was first and foremost, a naturalist. He tells the reader things that others didn’t bother to mention (for example, that with Honeylocust trees, each branch is of only one sex). The author also has a wonderful way of writing that makes the text come alive…always interesting. As a naturalist, Peattie looks at the whole picture; one of the few writers about trees who was also a dedicated ecologist. A great book!
This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity.
Single mother and limnologist Lynna witnesses disturbing events as she works for the powerful international utility CanadaCorp. Fearing for the welfare of her rebellious teenage daughter, Lynna sets in motion a series of events that tumble out of her control with calamitous consequence. The novel explores identity, relationship, and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.
Centuries from now, in a post-climate change dying boreal forest of what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, discovers a diary that may provide her with the answers to her yearning for Earth’s past—to the Age of Water, when the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity in hatred—events that have plagued her nightly in dreams. Looking for answers to this holocaust—and disturbed by her macabre longing for connection to the Water Twins—Kyo is led to the diary of a limnologist from the time just prior to the destruction. This gritty memoir describes a…
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