Indigenous Healing Plants is a fascinating compilation of the uses of more than 140 indigenous plants, from well-known garden favourites such as agapanthus and scented geraniums to lesser known plants like agt-dae-geneesbossie and ashwaganda. Margaret Roberts, in her inimitable style, shares the story of each plant's history and its various uses - medicinal, in cooking, as natural insect repellents and deodorisers - along with tried-and-tested recipes, as well as brief notes on how to grow it in the garden. The plants are illustrated by Sandy's full-colour photographs, alongside Margaret's delicate line drawings. This fully updated and expanded edition of Indigenous Healing Plants, which was first published in 1995, now includes an additional 15 indigenous medicinal plants as well as a new section on naturalised weeds and foraged food plants. This book records traditional wisdom and practical information on the many uses of indigenous South African plants and will appeal to anyone interested in health, gardening, cooking and homecrafting. It also offers a historical perspective and botanical detail that will be of interest to students of Botany, Homeopathy and Medicine.

"Wherein the gardener learns how to grow vegetables and the housewife how to cook them." Originally published in 1937, this is a wonderfully detailed and simple guide to, first, growing and then cooking your own vegetables. A hugely useful tome for the kitchen gardener, written with simple, easy to follow instructions and hints and tips. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: Introduction By C. H. Middleton - Introduction By Ambrose Heath - General Cultivation - Enemies Of The Kitchen Garden - An ABC of Vegetables - Salad Vegetables - Garden Herbs - Vegetable Dishes - A Few Vegetable Soups - Salad, Raw and Cooked - Herbs - Index - Index To French Recipes - Index To Latin Names

Charles Dowding draws on his years of experience, to show how easy it is to start a new vegetable garden. Any plot - whether a building site, overgrown with weeds or unwanted lawn - can be turned into a beautiful and productive vegetable area. Charles's no-nonsense and straightforward advice is the perfect starting point for the beginner or experienced gardener. The book takes you step-by-step through: * Planning and early stages * Clearing the ground * Mulch - what, why, how? * Minimizing digging * Sowing and planting across the seasons * Growing in polytunnels and greenhouses It is filled with labour-saving ideas and the techniques that Charles uses to garden so successfully and is illustrated throughout with photos and tales from Charles's first year in his new vegetable garden.

Ever wondered if you could grow plants from the food you buy? Grow Your Groceries shows you how.

Discover 40 simple, fun hacks to try – no gardening experience needed, just a windowsill and a recycled container.

Raise tomato plants from tomato slices. Collect strawberry seeds for endless strawberry plants. Pick salad leaves from beetroot tops. Split teabags for flowering camomile. Grow fresh cobs from popcorn kernels.

So don’t throw away your melon seeds and spring onion trimmings, save them to grow new plants instead!

Planting for Pollinators is an easy-to-use gardening guide to help you encourage different types of insect pollinators into your garden. Insect pollinators not only bring joy to our gardens, they also provide an essential service for our planet. Without bees, flies, hoverflies, butterflies, moths and beetles, some of our favourite foods, flowers and plants would cease to exist. Whether you have a large garden, an urban balcony or just a window box, planting to encourage pollinators is a fantastic and surprisingly easy first step in creating a wildlife-friendly space. Planting for Pollinators features a wide range of plants, with guidance on the best ways to nurture lawns and verges, pollinator predation and tips on watching and photographing wildlife. Beautifully illustrated throughout with images from award-winning wildlife photographer Heather Angel, this essential guide will show you how plants communicate with insects, and why it's so important to protect our pollinators. Organised by season and featuring more than 100 plant species - including bulbs, annuals, perennials, shrubs and climbers - this practical guide will help you to discover the short- and long-term benefits of having a variety of pollinators visit your garden.

Forest Gardening (or agroforestry) is a way of growing edible crops with nature doing most of the work. A forest garden imitates young natural woodland, with a wide range of crops grown in vertical layers. Species are chosen for their beneficial effects on each other, creating a healthy system that maintains its own fertility, with little need for digging, weeding or pest control. The result of this largely perennial planting is a tranquil, beautiful and productive space. This book is a bible for permaculture and forest gardening, with practical advice on how to create a forest garden, from planning and design to planting and maintenance. It explains how a forest garden is designed from the top down: the canopy layer first, then the shrub layer, the perennial ground-cover layer, the annuals & biennials next, the climbers and nitrogen fixers and finally the clearings, living spaces and paths. Whether in a small back garden or in a larger plot, the environmental benefits of growing this way are great. Forest Gardens are a viable solution to the challenge of a changing climate: we can grow food sustainably in them without compromising soil health, food quality or biodiversity. Forest gardens: store carbon dioxide in the soil and in the woody biomass of the trees and shrubs. enable the soil to store more water after heavy rains, minimizing flooding and erosion. boost the health of the ecosystem, ensuring a balance of predators and beneficial insects because mixed planting is crucial to the scheme. allows the soil to thrive because it is covered with plants all year round. Creating a Forest Garden includes a detailed directory of over 500 trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, annuals, root crops and climbers. As well as more familiar plants such as fig and apple trees, blackcurrants and rosemary shrubs, you can grow your own chokeberries, goji berries, yams, heartnuts, bamboo shoots and buffalo currants. Forest gardens produce fruits, nuts, vegetables, seeds, salads, herbs, spices, firewood, mushrooms, medicinal herbs, dye plants, soap plants, and honey from bees. This book tells you everything you need to create your own forest garden with beautiful illustrations and helpful tips throughout.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

This practical guide shows how to grow decorative flowers and foliage and use them to create floral arrangements, plans, plant and maintain a well-stocked cutting garden, and demonstrates how to create arrangements ranging from simple bunches to romantic hanging globes, swags and medallions.

The Field Guide to the Succulent Euphorbias of southern Africa by Alma Moeller and Rolf Becker is a pioneer publication on euphorbias in southern Africa. It is a beautifully illustrated, full colour identification guide that makes it easy for the layperson as well as anybody interested in the flora of southern Africa to identify a particular species. The Guide contains: Introductory chapters containing general information about the species characters, how to identify an euphorbia, growing euphorbias in cultivation, gardening with euphorbias, medicinal and other uses, herbaceous species and invaders. Detailed descriptions of 224 species, including emphasis on distinguishing features, habitat, distribution maps, conservation status, scientific and known common names, as well as notes on similar species. Similar looking species are grouped together in 18 species groups, based on easily recognisable morphological characters. Group 19 contains previously undescribed species, and Group 20 contains species of uncertain status. More than 870 full-colour photographs and illustrations. Taxonomic classification. Glossary and index to scientific and common names.

Originally published in the late 1800s, this is a delightful book on gardening that still contains much information of relevance to today's gardeners. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork Contents Include - The General Management of the Garden - Lawns, Paths, Beds, and Border On the Duty of Making Experiments - Some Neglected but Handsome Plants - The Conservatory and Greenhouse - The Tool Shed and Summer House - Roses and Aateurs - Enimies of the Garden - The Rockery - Trees, and How to Treat them - Shrubs- The Inns and outs of Gardening - The Profitable Portion - Annuels and Biennials - Window-Boxes - Table Decoration - The Propagation of Plants - The Management of Room Plants - Various Hints

This wonderful little book covers everything you need to know about the types of plants known as weeds. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer discusses the different varieties of weeds, how they grow and what they can tell us about soil health. The process of combatting weeds is discussed in principle as well as in practice, so that it can be applied to any situation. First written in the 1950s, this is still one of the best overviews of the subject available.

Undeservedly out of print for decades, American Plants for American Gardens was one of the first popular books to promote the use of plant ecology and native plants in gardening and landscaping. Emphasizing the strong links between ecology and aesthetics, nature and design, the book demonstrates the basic, practical application of ecological principles to the selection of plant groups or "associations" that are inherently suited to a particular climate, soil, topography, and lighting. Specifically, American Plants for American Gardens focuses on the vegetation concentrated in the northeastern United States, but which extends from the Atlantic Ocean west to the Alleghenies and south to Georgia. The plant community settings featured include the open field, hillside, wood and grove, streamside, ravine, pond, bog, and seaside. Plant lists and accompanying texts provide valuable information for the design and management of a wide range of project types: residential properties, school grounds, corporate office sites, roadways, and parks. In his introduction, Darrel G. Morrison locates American Plants for American Gardens among a handful of influential early books advocating the protection and use of native plants--a major area of interest today among serious gardeners, landscape architects, nursery managers, and students of ecology, botany, and landscape design. Included is an appendix of plant name changes that have occurred since the book's original publication in 1929. Ahead of their time in many ways, Edith A. Roberts and Elsa Rehmann can now speak to new generations of ecologically conscious Americans.

Easy and effective remedies are explained in a clear and practical way; step-by-step photographs show how to store water when it rains using water butts, containers and ponds, and how to conserve water used in the home. Practical advice is given on using compost to conserve water, and on lawn treatments. Special treatments and planting methods are covered in detail and help is given on grouping plants, correct watering and drought resistant plants. This is a book for all gardeners. It is superbly illustrated throughout and it contains all you need to know about creating a perfect garden when there is a water shortage.

Originally published in 1916, this is a wonderfully detailed guide to the growing, cultivation, harvesting and use of every type of herb. Written with the intention of providing instruction to grow enough herbs to resell or use in medicine, this book is packed with information - all of it still practical and useful to today's grower. Content Include - Herb Collecting Generally - Herbs in the Various Systems of Medicine and the Herbalists, Ancient and Modern - Weed Collecting - Methods of Drying Herbs - Herb Growing - A Note on Intensive Culture - Herbalist Pharmacy and the Revival of the Domestic Still Room - List of Medical Plants Arranged Under their Natural Orders - Trees and Shrubs - Explanation of Medical Terms

Originally published in 1936, by the celebrated writer Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, this book treats the subject of herbs, 'chiefly with a view to the making of a herb garden and the use of herbs for decorative effect in th flower garden'. This book covers the uses and the cultivation of herbs in exhaustive detail and is still of great practical use today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: The Charm of Herb Gardens - Rosemary - Lavender Lore - Sages of Virtue - The Bergamots - Paths of Thyme - A Collection of Marjorams - Stately Herbs - Kitchen and Salad Herbs - Bitter Herbs - Some Herbs Used in Medicine and Magic - The Making of a Herb Garden and Some Recipes

"Fruit can be grown almost anywhere" says Mr. Bush, "if you are prepared to take the trouble" . However, quite often the most intelligent and ardent gardener can go wrong simply because the trouble he takes is ill-directed. This book, first published in 1942 and since twice reprinted and revised, tries to guide the amateur in the growing of soft fruits. The subject is dealt with methodically; the general questions of aspect, soil, nursery material and planting procedure are reviewed first. There follows a discussion of the specific cultural details associated with the various soft fruits. The range is wide. Besides the better known blackberries, loganberries, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes and mushrooms, the less familiar figs, outdoor grapes, mulberries, cranberries, barberries, melons and passion fruit are included. Other matters are dealt with as well. The vagaries of temperature and climate, the use of the compost heap, the need for and practice of spraying are all separately and exactly explained. There is also a chapter on the pruning of cobs, a subject of which many horticulturalists fight shy. The perils and pitfalls which complicate the best laid plans of the most well-intentioned gardener are here averted. Contents Include: An Ounce of Practice - Coming Down to Earth - On Choosing Nursery Stock - Planting Fruit Bushes - Blackberries, Loganberries and Hybrids - The Black Currant - Red and White Currants - The Fig - Gooseberries - Grapes out of Doors - The Raspberry - Strawberries - The Tomato - Some Oddments - Nuts: Cob Nuts, Filberts and Walnuts - Is Spraying Necessary? - Mushrooms - The Whys and Wherefores of Spring Frosts - Manuring and CompostHeaps

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.