Lifestyle

With 18 projects gleaned from the author’s experience as director of the Good Earth Kids’ Club, Kids’ Container Gardening will teach enthusiastic young gardeners how to create an assortment of container gardens that are simple to make, that are fun to work on, and that make great gifts. Organized by season, the books’ chapters will help kids develop their green thumbs with projects ranging from “Great Big Garden Bowls for Mom,” “Father’s Day Fountains,” and other special occasion/holiday containers to sand art terrariums. In addition to providing the basics on plants and gardening, this helpful guide also includes a glossary of terms, a listing of plants used in the book, a list of resources, and numerous photographs to show kids that they’re proceeding on the right path as they create their individual containers.

The Homesteader's Herbal Companion is a beautiful guide for the modern day homesteader. From learning how to incorporate herbs and essential oils around your home, to learning how to enhance your family's health and well-being, this book is the go-to guide for those wishing to live a more natural homesteading lifestyle. This book takes readers through the basics of herbalism, including the different types of herbs and the uses for them around the homestead. It also breaks down how herbs are used in tinctures, salves, essential oils, and infused oils. Better yet, if you're a homesteader with livestock, you'll learn how to maintain their health holistically as well. With an array of beautiful photos and easy to read terminology, just about any homesteader, new or seasoned, can learn from The Homesteader's Herbal Companion, and finally feel comfortable incorporating the many wonderful qualities of herbs around their homes.

The essential gardener’s guide to growing native in New England Plants native to New England evolved to thrive in local conditions and survive harsh seasons. Native Plants for New England Gardens culls the expertise of the New England Wild Flower Society to help anyone create lovely, hardy gardens that will tolerate drought, resist disease and encourage biodiversity. This handy guide to 100 great native flowers, ground covers, shrubs, ferns, and grasses that will thrive in New England gardens features practical information accompanied by beautiful color photography. Find and nurture the native plants that your garden is missing—the planet will thank you.

According to the Virginia Cooperative Extension, operated by Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, there are more than 60 different kinds of shrubs in North America with varying pruning requirements, timelines, and necessities. This massive variety makes it so that anyone interested in pruning needs to be very well educated in how the process is completed, what it needed, what should be avoided, and most of all, when to plant, prune, and provide maintenance to your shrubs. This book walks every shrub enthusiast through the surprisingly complex process of pruning from the first seed in the ground to the annual progression of pruning steps that must be done in the right order to maximize the health of your shrubs. You will learn a variety of things including: top reasons for taking up pruning are what equipment is needed for pruning from start to finish the 10 most common pruning methods and a variety of other techniques how to apply these techniques to ornamental trees and shrubs, shade trees, evergreens, hedges, fruit trees, small trees, nut trees,vines and ground covers, and finally pruning houseplants and bonsai plants. You will benefit from the advice gathered from interviews with top experts in the field of pruning and gardening and their insights on how pruning should be completed for each type of plant. For anyone who interested in pruning of their plants either inside or outside, this guide will provide everything you need.

At the park, in the garden or on a walk, keep this tabbed booklet close at hand. Based on Jaret C. Daniels' best-selling butterfly field guides and featuring only Midwest species, Butterflies of the Midwest is organized by color for quick and easy identification. Narrow your choices by color, and view just a few butterflies at a time. The pocket-sized format is much easier to use than laminated foldouts, and the tear-resistant pages help to make the book durable in the field.

Whether you have a huge yard in a warm climate or a tiny apartment in a city with harsh winters, you can grow edibles year-round in the comfort and convenience of your own kitchen! Countertop Gardens will make you an expert in the world of indoor gardening, walking you through the challenges, benefits, and how-tos of growing inside and presenting the wide array of methods available. In addition to going over the pros and cons of a wide range of ready-made hydroponic, aquaponic, and vertical gardening systems, author Shelley Levis shows you how to make your own DIY setups--from simple space-saving container designs to more creative and complex soil-free solutions. No matter the size of your kitchen or your ambition, Countertop Gardens will help you make sure your favorite herbs, greens, fruits, and vegetables are within reach 365 days a year!

What gardeners want most is a bigger and better return on their investment of time and money—maximum yields and superior flavor for edibles, long-lasting blooms for flowers. Derek Fell's Grow This! features expert advice for choosing and growing the top-performing plants (and avoiding the ones that disappoint). Derek Fell has grown hundreds of varieties and annually visits gardens and test plots across America, so he's qualified to guide gardeners to the best of the best—more than 600 vegetable, flower, herb, and lawn grass all-stars. He offers honest feedback about plant performance, even when it contradicts favorable public opinion or a grower's claims. Seed racks may be filled with ‘Kentucky Wonder' snap beans, but he dismisses that variety as too fibrous and needy and instead recommends ‘Blue Lake' beans for tenderness and high yields. Fell's firsthand experience means the difference between choosing plant winners and losers. Packed with insider evaluations from seedsmen, growers, and nursery retailers that readers won't find elsewhere, Derek Fell's Grow This! explains industry lingo and debunks marketing hype to help gardeners select the best-performing plants for all garden conditions and goals.

Gardening Under Lights details everything a gardener or hobbyist needs to know to garden indoors. Part One starts with the basics of photosynthesis, the science of light, and how to accurately measure how much light a plant needs. Part Two provides an overview of the most up-to-date tools and gear available. Parts Three and Four offer tips and techniques for growing popular ornamental plants (orchids, succulents, bonsai, and more) and edible plants (arugula, cannabis, oregano, tomatoes, and more) independent of the constraints of volatile outdoor conditions. Gardening Under Lights is a highly-detailed, accessible guide for seed starters, plant collectors, and anyone who wants to successfully garden indoors.

“Will delight both the gardener and the cook.” — Library Journal. “A wonderful compendium — for anyone who wants to cultivate them or cook with them as so written as to definitely stimulate the interest of the passing page flipper.” — Kirkus Review. Over the years — as tastes have changed and fads have come and gone — the gentle art of the herbalist has remained a constant, year-round source of joy for an incredible array of connoisseurs — from professional horticulturists and accomplished gourmets to enthusiastic suburban gardeners and city-dwelling naturalists. This versatile, handy reference provides these thousands of amateur and professional herbalists with the most compact and complete handbook on culinary herbs and spices possible. Here in a thoroughly delightful labor of love are detailed instructions on how to plant, transplant, cultivate, harvest, use and preserve virtually every herb and spice available in North America today. Ms. Miloradovich takes us step by step through the various stages of herbal development, from preparing seedlings for early transplanting to drying, cutting, and quick-freezing fragrant herbs for potpourri, medicinal lotions, pomanders, and even moth preventives. Hundreds of herbs and spices are included, each introduced with a fascinating anecdote detailing its historical background and legends. Discover the power of cinnamon, one of the oldest spices known to humanity — used as a love potion by the Romans and a religious incense by the Hebrews and Ancient Egyptians. Find out why Italians still use basil as a token of love and Hindus still consider it a sacred symbol of reverence for the dead. Ms. Miloradovich has found an intriguing tale for each of the hundreds of herbs and spices she discusses — from bitter unblanched celery to delicious roots of love parsley. Whether you’d like to grow perennials, biennials, or annuals in your apartment window box, or you need a convenient guide for preserving rare herbs, or you just want to know more about the romantic histories, mysterious powers, and legends behind your favorite spices and fragrances, you’ll find this engaging book a stimulating source, sure to lead to more and more adventures growing and enjoying herbs and spices.

Hypertufa containers—also known as troughs—are rustic, striking, versatile, and perfect for small, Alpine plants. A mix of cement, perlite, peat, and water, they are simple and affordable to make at home. Hypertufa Containers details everything you need to know to make your own troughs and successfully garden in them. From plant portraits that include growing and cultivation information along with potting tips you’ll discover the amazing variety of plants that thrive in troughs. Hypertufa Containers features step-by-step instructions and color photography for making hypertufa containers in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Radical Regenerative Gardening and Farming informs and inspires gardeners, and farmers, who wish to bring quality and integrity into their work with the land. It is about developing close relationships with land that produces our food. This book combines over 40 years of Frank Holzman’s experience in farming, gardening, education, research, and development to provide techniques and concepts for sustainable land use. Radical Regenerative Gardening and Farming is a more spiritual and thoughtful approach to land stewardship, geared toward aspiring gardeners with a desire for a deeper connection with the earth. It is as much about why as it is about how to develop land. Rather than traditional tractor farming, this book provides a better understanding of horticulture, dealing with the biological interactions between soils and plants, and providing a good understanding of living systems. Holzman examines healthy perspectives of how to approach a piece of land as a living organism and transform it into a balanced ecosystem. Frank Holzman provides lots of information and insight for backyard gardeners and professional farmers, alike. Truly a great resource for transforming the garden, as well as the gardener.

Inspired by Frances Schultz’s popular House Beautiful magazine series on the makeover of her East Hampton house, Bee Cottage, what began as a decorating book evolved into a memoir combining the best elements of both: beautiful photos and a compelling personal story. Schultz taps into what she learned during her renovations of Bee Cottage—determining how each area in the house and garden would be used and furnished—to unravel the question of how a mature, intelligent, successful woman could have made such a mess of her personal life. As she figures out each room over a period of years, Frances finds a new path in life, also a continual process. She comes to learn that, like decorating a home, our lives must adapt to who we are and what we need at different points along the way. The Bee Cottage Story is part memoir, part home decorating guide. Frances discusses the kinds of useful, commonsense design issues professionals take for granted and the rest of us just may not think of, prompting the reader to examine and discover her own “truth” in decorating—and in her life.

We spray them, pluck them, and bury them under mulch; and we curse their resilience when they spring back into place. To most of us, weeds are a nuisance, not worth the dirt they are growing in. But the fact is weeds are a plant just like any other, and it is only we who designate them as a weed or not, as a plant we will dote over or one we will tear out of the earth with abandon. And as Nina Edwards shows in this history, that designation is constantly changing. Balancing popular history with botanical science, she tells the story of the lowly, but proud, weed. As Edwards shows, the idea of the weed is a slippery one, constantly changing under different needs, fashions, and contexts. In a tightly controlled field of corn, a scarlet poppy is a bright red intruder, but in other parts of the world it is an important cultural symbol, a potent and lucrative pharmaceutical source, or simply a beautiful, lakeside ornament. What we consider a pest—Aristolochia Rotunda, or “fat hen”—was, in Neolithic times, a staple crop, its seeds an important source of nutrition. Sprinkled with personal anecdotes and loads of useful information, Weeds sketches history after history of the fashions and attitudes that have shaped our gardens, showing us that it is just as important what we keep out of them as what we put in, and that just because we despise one species does not mean that there haven’t been others whose very lives have depended on it.

Gardening on rooftops, balconies, and terraces is a popular trend. After thirty-five years of experience, Susan Brownmiller writes with honesty and humor about her oasis twenty floors above a Manhattan street. She reports the catastrophes: losing daytime access during building-wide renovations; assaults from a mockingbird during his mating season. And the joys: a peach tree fruited for fifteen years; the windswept birches lasted for twenty-five. Butterflies and bees pay annual visits. She pampers a buddleia, a honeysuckle, roses, hydrangeas, and more. Her adventures celebrate the tenacity of nature, inviting readers to marvel at her garden’s resilience, and her own. Enhanced by over thirty color photographs, this passionate account of green life in a gritty, urban environment will appeal to readers and gardeners wherever they dwell.

“Reminds us that the best way to get to know a garden is through our senses.” —Gardenista So much of gardening is focused on the long list of chores—the weeding, the planting, and the pruning. But what about the joy a garden can provide? In The Garden in Every Sense and Season, Tovah Martin mindfully explores the sensory delights in her own garden and discovers the pleasures that can be found in focusing on sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. In 100 evocative essays, Martin shares sage garden advice, offers intimate reflections on her own garden, and urges us to inhale, savor, and become more attuned to our gardens. Packed with lush color photographs, The Garden in Every Sense and Season will help beginning and expert gardeners alike grow a bounty of gratitude.

An essential resource for all Australian and New Zealand gardeners who care about their family’s health and the environment Organic gardening leaves your patch of earth in a better condition than when you found it by working with nature rather than against it. A practicable and better alternative to chemical-dependent and environmentally unsustainable cultivation practices, organic gardening prevents soil damage, and results in more nutritious food, and fewer contaminated waterways and poison-resistant pests. Written by a certified-organic farmer and gardener, Easy Organic Gardening and Moon Planting is an indispensable reference to organic cultivation methods. It also contains an easy-to-follow moon-planting guide to help gardeners to work with the cycles of nature, listing the best planting, harvesting, and pruning days from 2017 to 2022. Full of common sense and wisdom, and written in a friendly, conversational voice, this book includes comprehensive information and advice about: how to protect your garden from climate change and save water how to revitalise garden soil and keep it healthy how to use composting and worm-farming techniques to transform garden and kitchen waste into top-quality, organic fertiliser how to grow your own fruit and vegetables in garden beds or pots how to raise healthier, pest- and disease-resistant seedlings, shrubs, and trees ― without using poisons. This wide-ranging book also features an extensive listing of Australian native plants, and a month-by-month diary of what to plant when for all climate zones of Australia and New Zealand. For aspiring and experienced gardeners alike, Easy Organic Gardening and Moon Planting will make your whole garden more vigorous, and a healthier haven for your family, pets, and native fauna.

More than 330 color illustrations and diagrams, backed with easily followed text, help gardeners at all skill levels learn to buy, plant, tend, and harvest a rich bounty of herbs. Complete herb identification and growing instructions are provided for annuals, biennials, bulbs, herbaceous perennials, and shrub-like herbs. There's also planting patterns for a compact cartwheel garden, corner and narrow planting beds, and formal herb gardens, and much more—plus information on preparing herbs for culinary use.

DIY Hydroponic Gardens takes the mystery out of growing in water. With practical information aimed at home DIYers, author Tyler Baras (Farmer Tyler to his fans) shows exactly how to build, plant, and maintain more than a dozen unique hydroponic systems, some of which cost just a few dollars to make. Growing produce without soil offers a unique opportunity to have a productive garden indoors or in areas where soil is not present. An expert in hydroponics, Baras has developed many unique and easy-to-build systems for growing entirely in water. In DIY Hydroponic Gardens, he shows with step-by-step photos precisely how to create these systems and how to plant and maintain them. All the information you need to get started with your home hydroponic system is included, from recipes for nutrient solutions, to light and ventilation sources, to specific plant-by-plant details that explain how to grow the most popular vegetables in a self-contained, soilless system. Even if you live in an area were water is scarce, a hydroponic system is the answer you’ve been looking for. Hydroponic systems are sealed and do not allow evaporation, making water loss virtually nonexistent.

Contemplative design and Zen teachings--a look at how we can transform our lives and our work through the lens of Japanese garden design. Garden design is the way of discovering the garden. And the garden is a metaphor for life itself. Part garden design philosophy and part Zen Buddhism, this book eloquently shows us how the principles of garden design are the same guidelines we can follow to design our life. Intentional living is the subject of design. When we approach our work in the garden, or in our life, through the practice of contemplative design, we can elevate the whole; we can unite the spiritual with the ordinary; we can join heaven and earth.

“A holistic approach to enhancing health and longevity through the creation of outdoor spaces.” ―Mary Palmer Dargan, ASLA Lifelong landscape design means thinking about more than your garden. It involves encouraging your community to be a well-rooted environment consisting of friends who share home-grown produce, walk in the neighborhood, recycle, water harvest, compost and are watchful of each other’s well-being. Lifelong landscape designs create environments that connect with nature, encompass a home, and promote healthy living by providing mobility, social interaction, and places to sustain the body and soul. Learn easy steps to design your own lifelong landscape through more than 200 landscape patterns and activities that illustrate components of healthy living. Enhance the quality of your life at any stage with practical advice from this inspirational landscape architect with more than 30 years experience. Mary Palmer Dargan is a nationally known principal in the Atlanta-based firm of Dargan Landscape Architects. Her projects have been published in many national publications and on Home and Garden Television (HGTV). She is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.