This work shows how to create enchanting outdoor spaces for all ages, combining the needs of children and pets with the adult desire to cultivate a beautiful garden. It is a quick reference on all aspects of planting and maintaining a garden, including advice on habitats and soil-types, co-ordinating colour and foliage, and identifying and dealing with pests. Practical tips and instructions are presented in topic-based spreads. The book offers a practical and realistic approach to organic alternatives as well as conventional gardening methods.

Learn which orchid plants to choose, how to obtain them, and how to cultivate them, either in a greenhouse or in the home.

Providing a guide to the cultivation of both the terrestrial and epihytic orchid species growing in South Africa, this volume includes numerous hints, illustrations and photographs to help simplify the process. Detailed growing notes are given for over 60 terrestrial and over 40 epiphytic species.

Learn to grow and care for decorative bonsai trees with this user-friendly Japanese gardening book. For those with no bonsai tree growing experience, Beginning Bonsai: The Gentle Art of Miniature Tree Growing covers everything from buying the first plant for beginning bonsai to creating a miniature landscape of rocks, grasses and trees. Authors Larry and Shirley Student describe different bonsai styles, list important tools, explain pruning and pinching and introduce procedures like defoliation. They cover all aspects of how to cultivate these miniature trees, anticipating common problems and offering practical bonsai advice gained from years of working with plants. Bonsai gardening topics include: Bonsai from different sources Choosing a bonsai site Essential techniques and materials Forests, groves, and Saikei Care of bonsai: a five-point program Root pruning and repotting Seasonal Changes Advanced Techniques Varieties of Bonsai Trees The clear, step-by-step instructions and photographs ensure that even the most inexperienced gardener will be able to start creating beautiful bonsai in no time. Despite being small, bonsai are not delicate-they are strong, hardy trees and creating them is a rewarding and inexpensive hobby that anyone can take up-even without an effortless green thumb.

Known as the guru of no-dig, Charles Dowding has updated his definitive book on salad-growing in this beautifully illustrated new edition: how to have tasty salad leaves all year round in a garden, balcony or windowsill; how to grow micro leaves and how to serve them in delicious recipes, all using organic or permaculture principles. Great for food lovers keen to eat tasty food with a low carbon footprint. This compendium of practical methods for growing a wide variety of salads throughout the year, will inspire you to grow your own, whether on a windowsill, in your garden or on the allotment. Here is all the information you need for productive, healthy and tasty salads. Learn the subtleties of salad seasons and virtues of different leaves throughout the year. And when your table is groaning with the abundance of your harvests, there are delicious and imaginative recipes by Stephanie Hafferty, exploiting the fantastic flavours, colour and vitality of home grown salad leaves.

This book takes the houseplant look outside by exploring the wonders of lush, green, foliage plants that are hardy in the garden. Unlike flowers which fade, these big-leaved, larger-than-life plants provide year-round impact for decades and small, urban gardens that are well protected are the perfect home for them. Expert horticulturist Philip Oostenbrink has been an enthusiastic grower for years and in this book recommends the best hardy, foliage plants for texture, leaf shape and colour. Jungle gardens can be shady and immersive, sunny and open or somewhere in between and there are plants suited to all these environments including purple-leaved bananas, desert-island palms, spiky agaves, architectural Pseudopanax and succulents such as Echeveria and Aeonium. Beautiful special photography by Sarah Cuttle features standout jungle gardens that demonstrate how to combine foliage plants effectively and create backdrops and container displays that make the plants pop. This book is the irresistible next step for all houseplant addicts and for all who are ready to embark on their very own jungle adventure.

Why plant a vegetable garden with the same old tomato and cucumber plants that everyone else has? Small Fruits in the Home Garden is your home gardener?s guide to growing and harvesting small fruit for personal enjoyment. The contributors to this book provide the necessary information and helpful hints for you to grow many new varieties of small fruits, that have wonderful flavor but may not be suitable for commercial production, right at home. Now you can harvest the tastiest varieties at their peak flavor! In Small Fruits in the Home Garden, you?ll see how small fruits can enhance not only your diet, but also your garden and landscape. You?ll learn how strawberry plants, for example, make wonderful perennial borders along paths and walkways and how currants, gooseberrries, and blueberries serve as "edible" hedges that are especially lovely in the summer when their branches are laden with colorful fruit. Each chapter of this unique handbook provides detailed background and growing information on a particular fruit, with special attention to: climate soil pests water table preplant operations planting management pruning fertilizing liming wateringSee how growing and harvesting small fruit can provide you with something nutritious and beautiful that doesn?t demand too much free time. With Small Fruits in the Home Garden, you, too, can easily manage and enjoy small fruit growing.

This volume is a lunar calendar and descriptive text that guides the novice planter through the world of planting, sowing, tending and harvesting vegetable and fruit plants according to the lunar and zodiacal cycle.

This book offers everything readers need to know to grow tasty organic fruit outdoors - whether in a garden, allotment or on their window ledge! It is suitable for beginners and includes a comprehensive directory. This latest title, from a growing and successful series, is by an UK author. What could be better than the enjoyment of tasting your own sweet, succulent, home-grown fruit? Most people have got room to grow some kind of fruit - whether it be a small apple tree in a front garden, a grape vine up a trellis or strawberries in a window box. Gardeners seeking a concise, easy-to-follow approach to fruit growing and maintenance need look no further; this book will provide all the practical advice and information that they need. With guidance on which fruits to choose, when and how to plant, propagate, harvest and store them, plus a comprehensive directory of popular varieties to grow - it won't be long before readers are discovering the delights of their own home-grown organic fruit.

The flora of Armenia is one of the most diverse in the world and includes many favourite garden plants and their relatives. Tamar Galstyan has travelled the length and breadth of her native country to bring us this essential companion for plant enthusiasts and botanists that describes more than 1000 plants including bulbs, herbaceous plants, woody plants, grasses and ferns. Spectacular photos bring the plants vividly to life and each entry includes a full plant description to aid identification and accompanying distribution map. This is a wonderful way of getting to know the plants of this fascinating country whether exploring at home or in the field.

Medicinal plants and plant-derived medicine are widely used in traditional cultures all over the world and they are becoming increasingly popular in modern society as natural alternatives to synthetic chemicals. As more and more natural remedies are being commercialised, there is a need for a user-friendly reference guide to the plants and their products. The book gives the reader a bird's eye view of more than 350 of the bestknown medicinal plants of the world and their uses, in a compact, colourful and scientifically accurate reference text. It provides quick answers to the most obvious questions: Where does this plant originate? What does it look like? In which culture is it traditionally used? What is it used for? Which chemical compounds does it contain? How safe is it? What is known about its pharmacological activity? What evidence is there that it is effective? The authors also provide short overviews of the various health conditions for which medicinal plants are used and the active compounds (secondary metabolites) found in the plants and their modes of actions.

A book for crafters and gardeners alike, from hugely popular author Kerry Lord. Thirty super-cute yarn flowers are yours to crochet, complete with step-by-step instructions and tips on all the techniques you need to make and finish off. ‘Cro’ your own garden from winter Snowdrop to summer Rose.

Well known for her crocheted animals, Kerry now takes to the garden and turns your favourite flowers into adorable yarn creatures to give as gifts or display at home. With no watering required, they are low maintenance and always in bloom! The 30 patterns include Snowdrop, Primrose, Daffodil, Hyacinth, Tulip, Allium, Chrysanthemum, Rose, Fuchsia, Sunflower, Gerbera, Marigold and Dahlia, and suggestions for alternative colours give you many variations, too.

All the projects are based on a simple bulb shape, allowing you to get started easily. Kerry includes step-by-step instructions and charts for each flower, including how to assemble and finish, plus a guide to all the basic crochet and sewing techniques needed, so this book is perfect for all skill levels. With inspirational photography of the crocheted flowers in the garden with their friends in the soil, it’s a fun must-have for any crochet fan.

Bring the beauty of succulents to your home or office with this on-trend DIY succulent magnet set. * SPECIFICATIONS: Includes everything you need to create succulent magnets including 3 faux succulents, 3 corks with pre-drilled holes, and 1 sheet of magnets with strong adhesive backing * BOOK INCLUDED: 32-page, fully illustrated mini book on succulents * UNIQUE GIFT FOR SUCCULENT LOVERS: An easy, on-trend DIY craft * SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS: Perfect for crafters of all ages and skill levels-no green thumb required! * PORTABLE: Small size allows for crafting fun anytime, anywhere

You can grow all the fruit and vegetables your family needs, raise animals for meat and eggs, keep fish and bees, and even produce firewood on a plot of land of just one acre or less - alongside your work and family life. Whether you have a garden, a paddock or perhaps the corner of a field, Sally Morgan guides you through: How to lay out your plot - including fencing and polytunnels or greenhouses Managing soil fertility Growing fruit and vegetables throughout the year Keeping livestock: poultry, pigs, sheep and goats Producing fish with aquaponics Filled with practical advice, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to be more self-sufficient and live a more sustainable life.

Throughout history flowers have been an integral part of human survival and culture - as food, for medicine, to express feelings, as symbols, to commemorate and celebrate, and to decorate. Their shapes, colours, scents and textures have always attracted us, as they do animals and insects. Flowers are used as luxury spices (saffron), and as colouring and flavouring agents - marigolds fed to chickens make eggs more yellow and lavender was Elizabeth I's favourite flavour of jam. Flowers are full of symbolic meaning: violets represent modesty, daises purity and daffodils unrequited love. And they have always played an important role in culture through myths and legends, literature and the decorative arts. This delightful new book brings together 100 of the world's flowers to tell their remarkable stories. Each flower is richly illustrated in colour and accompanied by facts about each species and what role it has played in our culture and history.

As gardeners become increasingly concerned with both drought and water conservation, plants that love the sun are an attractive option. From white flowering hawthorns to richly scented wisteria, they come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, with endless potential for producing stunning planting schemes. You'll find success with this vividly illustrated volume, which shows how to select the best sun-friendly varieties and plant them with confidence--whatever your experience. After explaining exactly how sunlight affects plants, it discusses creating the small amount of necessary shade; choosing and buying trees, shrubs, and flowers; preparing the soil; maintaining the plants, and solving common problems. A huge and beautiful A-Z directory covers annuals, biennials, and bedding plants; bulbous plants; perennials, climbers, conifers, and more.

Saffron is a Cape Town-based plant guru who is obsessed with plants, and she has over 500 of them. After years of amassing them, she put her knowledge to the test by writing "Jungle Problems," a user-friendly guide that will teach plant parents everything they need to know to keep their plants healthy and thriving.

Designed for gardener’s who want to know the secret language of their leafy friends, this fantastic guide will teach readers how to quickly diagnosing any issue with their plants, from the cause of their mysterious yellowing to the cause of their defiant wilting.

Saffron's Jungle Problems is jam-packed with helpful hints, brilliant solutions, and colourful illustrations. This is a fantastic resource which will turn any home gardener into the ultimate botanical investigator.

Add a touch of green to your office, bookshelf, coffee table or dorm room with these adorable mini ecosystems! A Beginner's Guide to Terrariums shows you how to create your own glass container gardens with easy-to-understand instructions and over 230 inspiring lifestyle photos. With this guide you'll learn all the basics, including how to: Decorate using a variety of plants Combine plants, rocks and other objects to achieve just the right look Choose the right container for your plants Care for a variety of plants, including low-maintenance ones like succulents, air plants and mosses This book includes 52 projects that teach you how to create a wide variety of terrariums--from open-air containers, like bowls, to jars and hanging decorations. No matter how you choose to display them, terrariums are a whimsical, easy and inexpensive addition to your home.

No dig organic gardening saves time and work. It requires an annual dressing of compost to help accelerate the improvement in soil structure and leads to higher fertility and less weeds. No dig experts, Charles Dowding and Stephanie Hafferty, explain how to set up a no dig garden. They describe how to: Make compost, enrich soil, harvest and prepare food and make natural beauty and clean ing products and garden preparations. These approaches work as well in small spaces as in large gardens. The Authors' combined experience gives you ways of growing, preparing and storing the plants you grow for many uses, including delicious vegetable feasts and many recipes and ideas for increasing self reliance, saving money, living sustainably and enjoying the pleasure of growing your own food, year round. Charles' advice is distilled from 35 years of growing vegetables intensively and efficiently; he is the acknowledged no dig guru and salad expert both in the UK and internationally. Stephanie, a kitchen gardener, grows in her small, productive home garden and allotment, and creates no dig gardens for restaurants and private estates.She presents truly delicious seasonal recipes, made from the vegetables anyone can grow. She also explains how to use common plants you can grow and forage for to make handmade preparation for the home and garden.