A review by Constance Casey on Slate.com, titled The Pedantic Organic, says Prince Charles makes saving the earth no fun. But the review says the substance is good. Here are a few excerpts from the review:

There is much to admire and much to envy in Prince Charles’ garden itself. He and his staff have been working on Highgrove’s 37 acres in Gloucestershire for more than 20 years.

The prince’s black-and-white garden is a dream. It’s worth picking up the book just to read the plant lists and see the photos. Highgrove’s organic systems are truly wonderful. Staff members go to school to learn to weave willow and hazel into plant supports, so as to reuse pruned branches instead of buying metal supports. In place of pesticides and inorganic fertilizer in the orchard, there are chickens, scratching in the grass for insects and exuding free soil enrichment. Slugs on the hostas are all eaten by welcome hedgehogs.

Rain runoff from roofs is harnessed in a 23,000-gallon holding tank. All the waste from the estate dwellings, including the royal bathrooms, gets pumped into bark-filled pits and then into a reed bed where the solids sink and wetland grasses and willows take up the phosphates and nitrates.

(The place is only occasionally open to the public, and then only to organized groups. There’s a five-year waiting list, unless you’re invited like Gore, or new friend Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation.)

(his new book, The Elements of Organic Gardening, with Stephanie Donaldson …)

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