PEACOCK MANURE AND MARIGOLDS

Subtitled A ""No-Poison"" Guide to a Beautiful Garden, this highly personalized, chatty book is temperamentally in contrast to but thematically in accord with Gardening Without Poisons, by Beatrice Trum Hunter. Mrs. Gillespie relies more on personal gardening experience-- and shares it -- to bring to the readers of Silent Spring a balanced method of gardening. She sprays, but discreetly, and with only mildly toxic chemicals such as rotenone (as does Mrs. Hunter); her argument is principally with the new World War II pesticides. But there are many other means of dealing with pests, from the general companionate planting plan to such specifics as placing moth balls with bulbs to keep away the mice. Mrs. Gillespie advises on how to buy hardy, resistant plants, how to start a lawn, how to mulch, as well as offering a list of vegetables and their treatment. There is much ready lore here, attractively presented, for the home gardener in particular. For those who prefer the more organized approach, the Hunter book will serve better, but Mrs. Gillespie's appeal is the more general and may well take hold. Foreword by Dr. William H. Drury, Jr. of the Hatheway School of Conservation Education and the Massachusetts Audubon Society.