Safe Sex in the Garden: And Other Propositions for an Allergy-Free World

This and Ogren's previous book, "Allergy-Free Gardening" should be on everyone's shelf, whether they garden or not. If you want to know why allergy incidence has quadrupled in the last few decades and asthma deaths have reach alarming numbers, this book explains it. Ogren's OPALS ranking scale can help us choose appropriate trees for our own gardens, plus he gives lists of recommended ground covers, poisonous plants, "super trees" and discusses pet allergies and all sorts of other relevant topics. The book is well-written and easy to understand, even when your sinuses are clogged and your eyes are running.

I have allergies and I found this book fascinating! I heard the author, Tom Ogren, interviewed on NPR's Weekend Edition with Linda Werthheimer. After hearing that interview I immediately wanted to read this book. It was every bit as good as I expected, better. It is a very clearly written book, but there is so much new information in it that I may have to read it three or four times for it all to sink in. The title of this book comes from the discovery that male plants, especially male street trees, are raining allergenic pollen on us all. Male plants are used since they don't make seeds. Female plants, which are all pollen-free, are shunned. The chapter on "How to tell the boys from the girls," is great! In some ways it reminds me a bit of The Botany of Desire, another book that mixes horticulture and health. I'm also going to buy the author's first book, Allergy-Free Gardening, a book I've heard nothing but praise for. In Safe Sex in the Garden there are many tips for living allergy-free. The horticulture is excellent too and it is completely clear that the author is a botanist of considerable standing. I looked him up on a Google search and found that he has landscaped an American Lung Association headquarters (in Richmond, VA), that the USDA urban foresters use his plant/allergy scale, and that county asthma coalitions hire him to produce pollen-free landscapes at elementary schools. This a very fine book and I intend to recommend it to all my friends who garden, who enjoy exciting botany, and certainly to anyone with asthma or allergies.

I flat out love this book! It is a real kick, lots of neat stories about real life interactions between people and plants. This might not sound like zippy material but actually, it is. I already owned Mr Ogren's earlier book, Allergy-Free Gardening, a book I simply can't do without. This one though, Safe Sex in the Garden, is more personal, very fun to read. There is a wealth of information here that you can't find anywhere else. Nothing else is even close really. No one understands plant sex better than this author. I live in Berkeley, California, and around here it seems like quite a few people are discovering these books. At least half a dozen of my friends have now read this and all of us are crazy about it. It is an important book. I am a teacher, have allergies, and am very interested in urban ecology, the biology of the city. This fine book has expanded my understanding of horticulture, medicine, nature, and the manipulation of our landscapes. I recommend it to all teachers, to those interested in gardening, health, to anyone who wants to learn some new and different aspects about the world around us. And yes, after you read this book, like me, I'm sure there will be some changes made in your own yards. This book is too cool!

Since I live in an apartment in San Francisco I don?t have yards or lawns or any of the more typical gardens, but I still found this book to be thought provoking and useful. On my balcony I have quite a few potted plants and I got rid of one of them as soon as I realized it was a male yew pine that produced pollen that was both allergenic and toxic. Inside the apartment we have houseplants and I will be making some changes here too. One of the chapters in Safe Sex in the Garden deals with indoor air quality and plants that either produce harmful VOCs (volatile organic compounds) or that consume these VOCs. The ficus tree I have been laboring for years to keep green, will go, replaced by something more benign. In this book are good chapters on stress and allergies, on feng shui gardens, on going organic, animal allergies, smog trees, outdoor mold reduction, skin rashes, poisonous plants, OPALS, groundcovers, and of course, how to tell the boys from the girls. The boys, you see, produce pollen, while the girls, although they might be a bit messy at times, they never produce pollen. Pollen is a male thing, in fact pollen is the male plant?s version of, well, you figure it out! I have long been interested in urban ecology and this book is easily one of the best and most important documents on the subject. The research that went into this book was not backed or directed by any large organization or university. This enabled the author, Ogren, to do it his own way, to look at things as they came. I think this explains a great deal as to why he discovered so much that so many others in medicine and horticulture so clearly missed. Read the chapter on the effects of global warming on pollen production, for example. Fascinating. With any luck at all, this book will be a big hit and will be sold far and wide. The author is and has been apparently attacked by some as being ?too political? for a science writer. I would say though, more power to him, go for it. Someone needs to let the cat out of the bag about this exploding allergy/asthma situation and he is the one to do it. I also enjoyed a great deal the sections on plant sex in history. Curious to see how scientists such as Gregor Mendel and even Charles Darwin, writing in prudish times, how both of them avoided mentioning plant sex, avoiding even the mention of pollen. My vote for best line in this book though, is this one: ?Considering that huge amounts of allergy and asthma are caused by excessive wind-blown pollen, it might not be too far fetched to say that pollen-allergy is no doubt the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world.?An excellent book!

Who knew pollen could do such devastating damage? This is a uniquely useful and truthful guide to a gigantic environmental problem we are all faced with--the unwitting pollution of our landscape via planting the "wrong" sex trees and plants. Overlook the cutsy title: Ogren's book is hard-hitting, wryly funny, and jam-packed with accessible info. Besides being fascinating and disquieting, this book offers real solutions. Imagine.