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Books > Health, Home & Family > Gardening > General
A timeless gardening classic by Christopher Lloyd, one of Britain's
most highly respected plantsmen, updated for the 21st century. With
a new foreword by Anna Pavord. This is a classic work by a gardener
who combines a passionate love of his subject with a critical
intelligence and a good helping of wit. THE WELL-TEMPERED GARDEN is
packed with the sort of information keen gardeners crave - from
planting, weeding and the pleasures of propagation to annuals,
water lilies and vegetables. Hailed as a masterpiece when it was
first published, THE WELL-TEMPERED GARDEN is as fresh, enlightening
and necessary for gardeners in the 21st century as it was when it
first appeared more than 40 years ago.
Discover the joys and self-nurturing benefits of plant parenthood,
from learning how to begin building your own lush plant family to
getting into those fun tips on how to care for your green gurls,
with this beautiful, illustrated guide from the dazzling creator of
the @plantkween Instagram account. "We all love some new growth,
dahling." Six years ago, Christopher Griffin was just beginning the
plant parenthood journey with one small Marble Queen Pothos. Today,
this Black Queer non-binary femme plant influencer known as Plant
Kween tends to a family of more than 200 healthy green gurls in the
Brooklyn apartment they call home. You Grow, Gurl! is Kween's fun
and fabulous guide to becoming a plant parent and keeping your
green gurls growing and thriving. Anyone can be a plant parent!
It's all about TLC-taking the time and energy to focus on a plant's
needs, and ultimately your own. Featuring 200 full-color photos and
illustrations, practical instructions and tips-on everything from
propagating to measuring humidity to repotting-activities, and
stories, this fun and joyful guide shows how to green-up any space
and have it serving those lush lewks. Self-care takes many forms
and tending to your plants' needs helps you grow too. In addition
to information and advice on plant care, Kween provides
meditations, mindfulness activities, playlists, and more to help
you practice self-care through plant-care. As Kween says, "We can
learn a lot about how we treat ourselves, how we treat others, and
how we navigate the world from these green lil creatures." Healing
and growing your heart, body, and soul takes time, love, and focus.
Taking care of plants teaches you to apply that same attention and
love to yourself and helps you find new pathways to explore on your
own botanical adventure to self-love.
Did you know that plants and plant products can be used to improve
people's cognitive, physical, psychological, and social
functioning? Well, they can, and Horticulture as Therapy is the
book to show you how If you are already familiar with the healing
potential of horticultural therapy, or even practice horticultural
therapy, this book will help you enrich your knowledge and skills
and revitalize your practice. You will learn how horticultural
therapy can be used with different populations in a variety of
settings, what resources are available, effective treatment
strategies, and the concepts behind horticultural treatment.The
first comprehensive text on the practice of horticulture as
therapy, this one-of-a-kind book will enable the profession to
educate future horticultural therapists with fundamental knowledge
and skills as they embark on careers as practitioners, researchers,
and educators. You come to understand the relationship between
people and plants more deeply as you learn about: vocational,
social, and therapeutic programs in horticulture special
populations including children, older adults, those who exhibit
criminal behavior, and those with developmental disabilities,
physical disabilities, mental health disorders, or traumatic brain
injury use of horticultural therapy in botanical gardening and
community settings adaptive gardening techniques applied research
documentation and assessment in horticultural practiceHorticulture
as Therapy establishes, integrates, and communicates a foundation
of knowledge for horticultural therapists, other therapists,
horticulturists, students, research scientists, gardeners, and
others interested in this special and unique kind of therapy. By
reading Horticulture as Therapy, you will see how you can make a
difference in the health and well-being of so many people, today
and tomorrow.
CBD and other cannabis-based products are widely available and
popular, with the number of dispensaries increasing exponentially
every month. But not all products are equal in terms of quality.
The best rule of thumb to know the grower or, even better, grow a
small quantity of the plant in the home garden and make your own
medicines. This beginner-friendly guide, written by a herbalist who
specializes in every aspect of making and using cannabis medicine,
teaches how to grow healthy cannabis plants outdoors for personal
use, and make your own customized remedies for addressing a range
of common ailments and chronic conditions. With step-by-step
photography taken in her own garden, author Tammi Sweet, shows the
growing phases of the plant and details techniques for planting,
caring for, harvesting, drying, and curing the plant. A complete
how-to guide to medicine-making shows the reader how easy it is to
make potent, safe, and affordable whole-plant tinctures, salves,
edibles, and oils.
The face of British gardening Monty Don and his wife Sarah tell the
magical story of the garden they have built over the last decade
THE JEWEL GARDEN is the story of the garden that over the past
decade has bloomed from the muddy fields around the Dons' Tudor
farmhouse, a perfect metaphor for the Monty and Sarah's own rise
from the ashes of a spectacular commercial failure. At the same
time THE JEWEL GARDEN is the story of a creative partnership that
has weathered the greatest storm, and a testament to the healing
powers of the soil. In his weekly column for the Observer, Monty
Don has always been candid about the garden's role in helping him
to pull back from the abyss of depression; THE JEWEL GARDEN
elaborates on this much further. Written in an optimistic,
autobiographical vein, Monty and Sarah's story is truly an
exploration of what it means to be a gardener.
Approaching organic gardening can sometimes feel overwhelming. It
can be hard enough to keep on top of the weeding without having to
worry about using less plastic, avoiding pesticides and using too
much water. Grow Green is a practical guide and tackles a topic
close to Jen Chillingsworth's heart - growing sustainably. Packed
with easy tips and advice, this little book reveals how to adjust
your outdoor space and create a wildlife haven, while reducing your
impact on the environment as you grow your own cut flowers, fruit
and veg. Drawing on her wealth of knowledge, Jen will hold your
hand as she takes you through all the gardening essentials,
teaching you how to get started - no matter how small or big your
space might be. From making your own fertiliser with leftovers,
planting in pots, reducing energy consumption and conserving water,
to dealing with pests and diseases, Jen removes the stress and
simply shows you how to garden green. Whether you are a first-time
gardener or have seasoned green fingers - discover how to get the
most out of your space with Grow Green by gardening with intention.
Live simply. Grow Green.
'Excellent book.' Nigella Lawson 'Charming, inspiring, uplifting...
pure lovely.' Marian Keyes 'Read Rhapsody in Green. A novelist's
beautiful, useful essays about her tiny garden.' India Knight
'Glorious...for anyone who loves fruit, vegetables, herbs and
language. It makes you see them with new eyes.' Diana Henry 'A
witty account of 'extreme allotmenteering' for all obsessive
gardeners' Mail on Sunday 'An extremely entertaining and inspiring
story of one woman's passionate transformation of a small,
irregular shaped urban garden into a bountiful source of food.'
Woman & Home 'A gardening book like no other, this is the
author's 'love letter' to her garden. She relays warm and witty
stories about the trials and tribulations throughout her gardening
year.' Garden News '...this inspirational, funny book, written by
someone who hankers after a homesteader's lifestyle, will make you
look at even your window box in a new, more productive light.' The
Simple Things 'Gardening is not a hobby but a passion: a mess of
excitement and compulsion and urgency and desire. Those who
practise it are botanists, evangelists, freedom fighters, midwives
and saboteurs; we kill; we bleed. No, I can't drop everything to
come in for dinner; it's a matter of life and death out here.'
Novelist Charlotte Mendelson has a secret life. Despite owning only
six square metres of urban soil and a few pots, she is an extreme
gardener; the creator of a tiny but bountiful edible jungle. And
like all enthusiasts, she will not rest until you share her
obsession. This is the story of an amateur gardener's journey to
addiction: her attempts to buy lion dung from London Zoo and to
build her own cold frame; her disinhibited composting and creative
approach to design; her prejudices (roses, purple flowers, people
with orchards); and her passions: quinces, salad-leaves, herbs,
Japanese greens and ancient British apples. It is a story of where
fantasy meets reality, of the slow onset of a consuming love and,
most of all, of how gardening, however peculiar, can save your
life.
This critically acclaimed and definitive permaculture design book
was the inspiration that BBC2's Brigit Strawbridge (of Its Not Easy
Being Green) needed to attend her first permaculture design course
with Patrick Whitefield, setting her and her family off on a voyage
of discovery which is helping to introduce and inspire others.
Already hailed in the UK, Europe and America as definitive, and
reprinted by popular demand, The Earth Care Manual offers an
inspirational yet practical vision of a sustainable future
invaluable to those new to the subject as well as to the
experienced practitioner. The permaculture movement started in the
1970s as a sustainable alternative to modern industrial
agriculture, taking its inspiration from natural ecosystems. It
initially placed an emphasis on gardening, with proponents of
permaculture since expanding on its principles; addressing all
subjects vital to sustainability, from building and community
design to food, energy, water, microclimate and shelter. All of
these topics and more are addressed in The Earth Care Manual,
demonstrating that permaculture is an interconnecting framework
linking a diversity of green ideas.Its aims are a low input, high
output efficient use of resources, and genuine sustainability. The
Earth Care Manual gives a vision of a sustainable future and the
practical steps we can take towards it, both large and small, urban
and rural. Written by Patrick Whitefield, one of Europes foremost
teachers and practitioners of temperate permaculture, it explains
in depth how to apply permaculture to any situation, from the
smallest of buildings or apartments, to houses, gardens, orchards,
farms and woodlands.
Explore ideas, consider the big questions and learn life lessons in
your garden. Gardening is an innately thoughtful as well as
practical pastime: planning ahead, imagining how plants will grow,
deciding what will make a 'good' garden, wondering at the beauty of
flowers and noticing how ecosystems work. This delightful and
engaging collection of essays illustrate how many philosophical
ideas arise naturally in gardeners' everyday work. Growers by their
nature are in fact already philosophers: existentialists who try to
live and work by their own rules in a garden; stoics who put up
with slug damage again and again, and try to work in harmony with
nature; and practical quantum scientists who witness incredible
processes going on in plant cells beneath the ground. In Philosophy
for Gardeners, Kate Collyns uses aspects of gardening to introduce
and explore a range of philosophical ideas and schools of thought;
cultivating a greater understanding and appreciation of intriguing
concepts, propagated from science, evolution and aesthetics through
to politics, economics and ethics. Broken into four sections, Soil,
Growth, Harvest and Cycles, each section explores questions of
philosophy through the lens of the garden. A fascinating read, this
book is as perfect for students of philosophy as it is for
gardeners, filled with thought-provoking reflections on life, being
and existence.
Homesteading From Scratch is for people who want to do things
differently the type of people who want to eat real food, grow
herbs, make cheese, raise baby animals, hunt mushrooms, pick
blackberries, unschool their children, can jelly, ferment kraut,
farm organically, connect to nature, live intentionally, and more.
Guiding readers from desire to full-blown off-the-grid living and
everything in between this book covers farming, animal husbandry,
food preparation, homeschooling, fiber arts, and even marketing. It
provides inspiration from other homesteaders, with operations from
small to large, who have made a go of it, outlining their successes
and failures throughout the process. It helps to democratize the
homesteading movement, by providing "ins" for nearly every level of
dedication, from the container gardener to full-time farmers. It
provides the knowledge necessary to discover homesteading as a
movement and as a lifestyle. Inspired by From Scratch magazine, an
online publication devoted to homesteading and intentional living,
this book provides readers with continued support and community for
information and resources online. This book serves as a reference,
as well as a cheerleader, for those who want a bit more control and
responsibility over where their food comes from, what they consume,
and how they live their lives.
Winner of the Best Book Award in the 2009 Garden Writers
Association Media Awards Named an "Outstanding Title" in University
Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2009 In this
introduction to sustainable landscaping practices, Linda
Chalker-Scott addresses the most common myths and misconceptions
that plague home gardeners and horticultural professionals.
Chalker-Scott offers invaluable advice to gardeners gardeners who
have wondered: Are native plants the best choice for sustainable
landscaping? Should you avoid disturbing the root ball when
planting? Are organic products better or safer than synthetic ones?
What is the best way to control weeds-fabric or mulch? Does giving
vitamins to plants stimulate growth? Are compost teas effective in
controlling diseases? When is the best time to water in hot
weather? If you pay more, do you get a higher-quality plant? How
can you differentiate good advice from bad advice? The answers may
surprise you. In her more than twenty years as a university
researcher and educator in the field of plant physiology, Linda
Chalker-Scott has discovered a number of so-called truths that
originated in traditional agriculture and that have been applied to
urban horticulture, in many cases damaging both plant and
environmental health. The Informed Gardener is based on basic and
applied research from university faculty and landscape
professionals, originally published in peer-reviewed journals.
After reading this book, you will: Understand your landscape or
garden plants as components of a living system Save time (by not
overdoing soil preparation, weeding, pruning, staking, or replacing
plants that have died before their time) Save money (by avoiding
worthless or harmful garden products, and producing healthier,
longer-lived plants) Reduce use of fertilizers and pesticides
Assess marketing claims objectively This book will be of interest
to landscape architects, nursery and landscape professionals, urban
foresters, arborists, certified professional horticulturists, and
home gardeners. For more information go to:
http://www.theinformedgardener.com
'Gardens are complex and messy and, as in life, there are few easy
fixes.' 'Planting trees is deeply satisfying and good for the soul,
especially on a winter's day. What else can a human do that leans
so far into the future.' Monty Don, the face of British gardening,
has written a weekly Observer column on his garden for the past ten
years. Over time the columns have been a practical guide, a poetic
record of the garden's changing seasons, and also a personal
account of how the garden has kept his feet firmly planted on the
ground through bad times and good. This is a collection of fifty of
Monty's best columns, that will delight his readers and gardeners
everywhere. 'Growing vegetables, herbs and fruit should be done in
the same spirit as choosing your music or clothes: with a mix of
precision and adventure.' 'One swallow may not make a summer but it
damn sure made my day.'
The Informed Gardener Blooms Again picks up where The Informed
Gardener left off, using scientific literature to debunk a new set
of common gardening myths. Once again, Linda Chalker-Scott
investigates the science behind each myth, reminding us that urban
and suburban landscapes are ecosystems requiring their own
particular set of management practices. The Informed Gardener
Blooms Again provides answers to questions such as: --* Does using
drought-tolerant plants reduce water consumption?-* Is it more
effective to spray fertilizers on the leaves of trees and shrubs
than to apply it to the soil?-* Will cedar wood chips kill
landscape plants?-* Should I use ladybugs in my garden as a form of
pest control?-* Does aerobically brewed compost tea suppress
disease?--Every year Chalker-Scott receives hundreds of e-mails
from around the world on these and related topics. Her advice,
based on more than twenty years of experience in the field of plant
physiology, has helped home gardeners, landscape architects, and
nursery and landscape professionals to develop scientifically based
sustainable landscaping practices.--Linda Chalker-Scott is an urban
horticulturist and associate professor at Puyallup Research and
Extension Center, Washington State University. She is the author of
The Informed Gardener, winner of the Best Book Prize from the
Garden Writers Association. She is the editor and co-author of
Sustainable Landscapes and Gardens, the Washington State editor of
MasterGardener magazine, and author of the online column
"Horticultural Myths." She has a new blog at
gardenprofessors.com.--"Buy this book and I guarantee you'll save
money. Linda Chalker-Scott prunes the advertising hype behind many
garden additives -- Epsom salts, peat mulch, gypsum, water
crystals, compost tea, and more. Her commonsense approach,
heralding scientific rigor and challenging 'junk science' is a must
read for every serious gardener." -Suzy Bales, author of Garden
Bouquets and Beyond--"An essential tool in deciphering both
eco-myths and advertising copy. It helped me to distinguish the
greenwashing from the truly 'green.' And to be guided by actual
research findings? What a concept One that advertising copy writers
and eco-advocates alike don't want us to follow." -Susan Harris,
author of Sustainable-Gardening.com and GardenRant.com--"Linda
Chalker-Scott is a scientist with a mission -- evidence-based
gardening. Happily she is also the most interesting, entertaining,
knowledgeable, and useful garden writer I've come across. Home
gardeners will learn practices that are more effective, safer, and
-- believe me, this is no small thing -- cheaper." -Constance
Casey, former New York City Parks Department gardener and regular
gardening and natural history contributor to Slate.com---Praise for
The Informed Gardener: --"A no-nonsense, no-hype,
nothing-to-sell-but-the-truth voice that straddles an important
line between hearsay gardening and scientific fact in ornamental
horticulture." -Ketzel Levine--"This enjoyable book should find its
way into the hands of almost every gardener. Highly recommended for
public libraries with gardeners ready to tackle the literature, as
well as academic and special libraries with interests in
horticulture and gardening." -Library Journal--"A succinct and
easy-to-navigate resource . . . Chalker-Scott's instructions are
clear enough for even a first-time gardener to follow." -The
Bloomsbury Review--"Chalker-Scott's approach is unique in that she
speaks about gardening as a genuine expert-with academic
credentials-who debunks numerous myths.... in a manner that is easy
for us laypeople to understand and absorb...Her conclusions are
good advice for all of us to follow." -Washington State Grange
News--"In her first book she takes on common garden myths about
fertilizer, mulch, transplanting, staking, compost tea, watering
and many more potentially confusing topics. She skillfully debunks
them with current research as well as her experience in extension
horticulture." -Seattle Times--"An informative, helpful guide to
sustainable landscaping, with valuable emphasis on cutting through
many of the myths and misunderstandings that now surround this
increasingly hot topic." -Seattle Post-Intelligencer--" Linda
Chalker-Scott's] book does great service in helping the urban
gardener move past common practices that hinder instead of help,
looking to nature itself as the ultimate teacher of truths."
-Cascadia Weekly--"Linda Chalker-Scott is gardening's version of
television's MythBusters. Ok, so she isn't so keen on blowing
things up, but she does use scientific research to explain why many
traditional horticultural practices aren't suitable for urban
landscapes." -Tacoma News Tribun
If you are one of those people who haven't got time to hang around
waiting for your garden to mature, then this is the book for you.
It offers stylish and desirable rapid results for the time-poor and
is ideal for anyone starting to garden or tackling a long-neglected
plot. Look inside for garden facelifts you can achieve in a couple
of hours - or a weekend at most. Discover the designer tips that
will win your garden first-in-show prize every time. Find speedy
garden fixes for instant results as well as long-term pleasure. See
how to add maximum drama with minimum effort. Find out which plants
your garden needs to pack a punch. Learn the simplest ways to keep
your garden looking good all year long. No matter whether your
garden's cricket-pitch size or just a window box, these handy tips,
quick fixes and pearls of wisdom are exactly what you need to make
your plot the envy of your friends.
First published as Beth Chatto's Woodland Garden by Cassell in
2002, this Pimpernel Classic edition includes a new afterword by
David Ward, Garden and Nursery Director at Beth Chatto's Garden and
a new introduction by Beth Chatto. 'Most gardens have dark areas -
a north-facing border, an area shaded by a hedge, fence or house
wall, a bed in the shade cast by shrubs or trees with greedy roots
- and for many gardeners these are a challenge, and often a trial.
Fortunately there are plants adapted by Nature to a vast range of
conditions and, by choosing suitable plants, we can transform
almost any problem site into something beautiful.' In this book
legendary plantswoman Beth Chatto shows how the problem of shade in
a garden can be turned to advantage. She tells how she transformed
a dark, derelict site into a woodland garden that is tranquil and
serene yet full of life and interest in every season. She
describes, too, a wealth of plants that will thrive in shady beds
and borders and on walls.
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