Creating a beautiful outdoor space in under an hour a week. You can create a stunning garden that is quick to establish, and can be maintained in under an hour a week. It includes practical advice on using time-saving equipment and techniques for maximum effort in minimum time. It features inspiration for five easy-care gardens to suit your taste in design. It includes a useful chart of simple-to-grow plants, showing their individual cultivation requirements. It is perfect for every weekend gardener who wants to spend time enjoying their garden rather than working on it. Sections include easy garden maintenance, easy-care gardens, low-maintenance landscaping, low-maintenance plants, ideas for special features, easy-care plants and the common names of plants. If you long for a beautiful garden but have limited time to create and care for one, here is a quick and handy guide that will show you how to create the garden of your dreams with minimum effort. The book explains how careful planning, design and planting will ensure trouble-free gardening in the future and gives lots of useful information on the best equipment and techniques. There are recommendations for easy plants that require very little aftercare, as well as inspiration for five garden styles, and shortcuts to create usually time-consuming special features. With its wealth of invaluable advice, this is the ideal sourcebook for the time-pressed garden lover.

Food - how it's grown, how it's shared - makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind's first task: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one's hands dirty raising one's own food, then, doesn't just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, "The Welcome Table," comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible's closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited - a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Koeder, Carl Juste, Andre Chung, Angel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

This simple book is packed with information on hydroponic gardening. The graphic color and layout and design help to guide a hydroponic gardener from basic plant science and environment to purchasing a garden and appropriate supplies. Plans for making your own hydroponic garden, nutrient deficiencies, plant problems, and growing a garden beginning to end are all included in this invaluable guide.

Learn to identify wildflowers in North Carolina and South Carolina with this handy field guide, organized by color. With this famous field guide by professional nature photographers Nora and Rick Bowers and by award-winning author and naturalist Stan Tekiela, you can make wildflower identification simple, informative, and productive. There's no need to look through dozens of photos of wildflowers that don't grow in the Carolinas. Learn about 200 of the most common and important species found in the region. They're organized by color and then by size for ease of use. Fact-filled information contains the particulars that you want to know, while full-page photographs provide the visual detail needed for accurate identification. Book Features 200 species: Only North and South Carolina wildflowers! Simple color guide: See a purple flower? Go to the purple section Fact-filled information and stunning professional photographs Icons that make visual identification quick and easy Nature Notes, including naturalist tidbits and facts This new edition includes updated photographs, expanded information, and even more expert naturalist insights. Grab Wildflowers of the Carolinas Field Guide for your next outing-to help you positively identify the wildflowers that you see.

The vast North Woods, a land magnificently arrayed in the deep greens of pine, spruce, and fir and the brilliant blues of crystal clear lakes, spans the area from Minnesota to Maine and from Michigan to Hudson Bay. With a little help fromCanoe Country Flora, keen explorers will discover a world full of life and wonder in the plants that thrive in this beautiful lake country. Canoe Country Flora, a friendly field guide, introduces you to ninety-six of the most common trees, shrubs, wildflowers, fungi, ferns, lichens, and other plants you're likely to encounter during your travels north. Detailed line drawings and brief plant profiles help you recognize what you're seeing, while "Sparky" Stensaas's intriguing tales draw you into a deeper study of the plants's natural and cultural histories. Each plant is made identifiable and memorable by fascinating facts, handy checklists, diagrams and charts, and interesting activities that help adults and children learn by discovery. Use this book as a companion to Canoe Country Wildlife or alone as your guide to a unique North Woods adventure.

Tending our gardens is a lifelong pleasure. As we age, our energy and physical abilities become more limited. But gardens are magical, evolving places, with the potential to keep us young at heart, physically fit, out in the fresh air and full to the brim with joy and expectation. This ground-breaking book shows how easy it is for older people to carry on gardening. The different kinds of garden set-up are considered first, along with planning decisions and how best to keep safe and comfortable. An informative chapter looks at the main gardening activities and appropriate equipment, especially those that answer physical limitations. Different styles of garden are then presented: flower, vegetable, fruit, raised, herb, patio, vertical and indoor gardens, each one including projects and techniques, from building a raised bed to growing potatoes in containers. The final chapter is a directory that profiles the many planting choices available. Packed with projects, garden plans and step-by-step sequences designed for older gardeners who may not be able to exert themselves in the same way as they once could, this will appeal to active gardeners in their early retirement through to seniors with more limited abilities, and show how gardening can be a lifelong pleasure.

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.

Just moved in and don't know what to do with a messy garden or bleak-looking balcony? Want to stake your claim on a little corner of a shared garden? No gardening experience whatsoever? Fix Your Garden is the perfect solution. Packed with tips and tricks to get your green fingers going straight away, this beautifully illustrated little book will help you make the most of your outdoor space, even if you've only got a tiny windowbox. Aimed at the first-time homeowner or renter with little or no gardening know-how, it contains a wealth of information on how to make your garden grow and your balcony bloom, from early analysis of the soil to find out which plants will do best, to fixing that weed-covered wilderness of a backyard you've inherited and starting to grow your own fruit and veg. With tips on garden design and how to conquer common pests and diseases, this is a crash course in getting your outdoor space sorted, and also contains information on houseplants so you can bring a little bit of the outdoors in. Word count: 15,000

"Explains how your garden can be a thriving, balanced community that gives more to your landscape than it takes." --Douglas W. Tallamy, author of The Nature of Oaks and Nature's Best Hope The birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that inhabit our yards and gardens are overwhelmingly on our side--they are not our enemies, but instead our allies. They pollinate our flowers and vegetable crops, and they keep pests in check. In Garden Allies, Frederique Lavoipierre shares fascinating portraits of these creatures, describing their life cycles and showing how they keep the garden's ecology in balance. Also included is helpful information on how to nurture and welcome these valuable creatures into your garden. With beautiful pen-and-ink drawings by Craig Latker, Garden Allies invites you to make friends with the creatures that fill your garden--the reward is a renewed sense of nature's beauty and a garden humming with life.

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

A swimming pond is beautiful all year round, for it lives and changes with the seasons. Plants, animals, and the water make it an experience for young and old. A swimming pond has practical advantages: it is easy to care for and needs no expensive technology or chemicals. The swimming-pond ecosystem regenerates itself. Swimming ponds fit into every type of garden, whether natural or structured design. The pond should suit the style of your garden and blend into the surroundings. In this book, swimming-pond owners speak from experience, tell of the planning and building phases and how swimming ponds enrich their garden pleasure. This book becomes a source of inspiration for all who dream of having a swimming pond.

The avid gardener will need no other resource than this book to plan and maintain a natural garden on the country farm or in the suburban backyard, a habitat congenial to the scarlet tanager, the monarch butterfly, and the toad.

Unique to this book is author Beresford-Kroeger's concept of bioplanning, in which the gardener views the site as a biological system and the activity of gardening as an ecological task. To assist in bioplanning a garden, the author provides both plans that are adaptable to different garden sizes and shapes, as well as planting instructions emphasizing organic care, ecofunction, and environmentally friendly means of pest control.

"A Garden for Life" challenges everyone to create an ecologically valuable garden for the joy of doing so, and for the salvation of our natural world.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is the author of "Arboretum America." She is a botanist, medical and agricultural researcher, lecturer, and self-defined "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

"When it sings, a garden will have the power to transport and to lead you to a place that is magical. It is an oasis for creation, available to anyone with a little space and the compunction to get their hands dirty." In Natural Selection, Dan Pearson draws on ten years of his Observer columns to explore the rhythms and pleasures of a year in the garden. Travelling between his city-bound plot in Peckham and twenty acres of rolling hillside in Somerset, he celebrates the beautiful skeletons of the winter garden, the joyous passage into spring, the heady smell of summer's bud break and the flaring of colour in autumn. Pearson's irresistible enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge overflow in a book teeming with tips to inspire your own space, be it a city window box or country field. Bringing you a newfound appreciation of nature, both wild and tamed, reading Natural Selection is a deeply restorative experience.

A backyard field of grains? Yes, absolutely Wheat and corn are rapidly replacing grass in the yards of dedicated locavores across the country. For adventurous homeowners who want to get in on the movement, "Homegrown Whole Grains" is the place to begin.
Growing whole grains is simpler and more rewarding than most people imagine. With as little as 1000 square feet of land, backyard farmers can grow enough wheat to harvest 50 pounds in a single afternoon - and those 50 pounds can be baked into 50 loaves of fresh bread.
In addition to providing information on wheat and corn, "Homegrown Whole Grains" includes complete growing, harvesting, and threshing instructions for barley, millet, oats, rice, rye, spelt, and quinoa, and lighter coverage of several specialty grains. Readers will also find helpful tips on processing whole grains, from what to look for in a home mill to how to dry corn and remove the hulls from barley and rice.
Chapters for each grain include inventive recipes for cereals, desserts, casseroles, salads, soups and stews, and, of course, home-baked breads, the crowning achievement of the home grain grower. Sara Pitzer shares dozens of ideas for using whole grains - from cooking sturdy wheat berries in a slow cooker to malting barley for homebrewed beer. Whether milled into nutritional flours or used in any of their unmilled states, wheat, barley, quinoa, and the other grain crops are healthful additions to every diet.

The colours, shapes, and scents of flowers are as ravishing to the senses as to the soul. But it's all too easy get things wrong: colours that clash, flowers that bloom at the wrong time, plants that fail to thrive. Enter The Ultimate Flower Gardener's Guide by expert gardener Jenny Rose Carey. She tells you exactly how to get started, how to combine plants for the most spectacular effects, and how to keep your garden going from year to year. Whether you're interested in dramatic color combinations, how best to use a favorite flower, or how to create a garden for a specific purpose, such as nourishing pollinators, you'll find the answers in this friendly, information-packed book. As Jenny herself says, "Don't be afraid - just have a go!"

"For Northeastern gardeners--all of whom battle the serious problem that is deer browsing--this is definitely one for the library." --GardenRant The benefits of native plants are plentiful--less upkeep, more pollinators, and a better environment. In Deer-Resistant Native Plants for the Northeast, Ruth Rogers Clausen and Gregory D. Tepper provide a list of native plants that have one more benefit--they are proven to help prevent your garden from becoming a deer buffet. From annuals and perennials to grasses and shrubs, every suggested plant includes a deer-resistance rating, growing advice, companion species, and the beneficial wildlife the plant does attract. Let these beautiful natives help your landscape flourish! For gardeners in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, DC.

This text is an introduction to harmonic analysis on symmetric spaces, focusing on advanced topics such as higher rank spaces, positive definite matrix space and generalizations. It is intended for beginning graduate students in mathematics or researchers in physics or engineering. As with the introductory book entitled "Harmonic Analysis on Symmetric Spaces - Euclidean Space, the Sphere, and the Poincare Upper Half Plane, the style is informal with an emphasis on motivation, concrete examples, history, and applications. The symmetric spaces considered here are quotients X=G/K, where G is a non-compact real Lie group, such as the general linear group GL(n,P) of all n x n non-singular real matrices, and K=O(n), the maximal compact subgroup of orthogonal matrices. Other examples are Siegel's upper half "plane" and the quaternionic upper half "plane". In the case of the general linear group, one can identify X with the space Pn of n x n positive definite symmetric matrices. Many corrections and updates have been incorporated in this new edition. Updates include discussions of random matrix theory and quantum chaos, as well as recent research on modular forms and their corresponding L-functions in higher rank. Many applications have been added, such as the solution of the heat equation on Pn, the central limit theorem of Donald St. P. Richards for Pn, results on densest lattice packing of spheres in Euclidean space, and GL(n)-analogs of the Weyl law for eigenvalues of the Laplacian in plane domains. Topics featured throughout the text include inversion formulas for Fourier transforms, central limit theorems, fundamental domains in X for discrete groups (such as the modular group GL(n,Z) of n x n matrices with integer entries and determinant +/-1), connections with the problem of finding densest lattice packings of spheres in Euclidean space, automorphic forms, Hecke operators, L-functions, and the Selberg trace formula and its applications in spectral theory as well as number theory.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Garden Practices and Their Science guides gardeners in the practical arts of plant husbandry and in their understanding of its underpinning principles. The author, Professor Geoff Dixon, is an acknowledged and internationally respected horticulturist and microbiologist; he intertwines these arts and principles carefully, expertly leading readers from one to the other. Achieving the manipulation of plant life is described in eight full-colour, well-illustrated chapters covering the growing of potatoes, bulb onions, legumes, small-seeded vegetables, soft fruit, bulbs and herbaceous ornamentals in great detail. Environmental factors controlling the successful husbandry of these crops is described in simple, non-technical language, increasing gardeners' enjoyment and competence. Gardeners are also informed of the tools and equipment they require and their safe use. Also provided are a series of simple, straightforward tests identifying the aerial and soil environments beneficial for plant growth using readily accessible domestic tools. Discussions of very straightforward techniques for vegetative propagation conclude this book. Each chapter ends with a list of the gardening knowledge that has been gained by readers. The structure of this book fulfils a longstanding need for descriptions of practical skills integrated with the corresponding biological reactions of plants. Emphasis is placed on gardeners' development of healthy soils, which encourage vigorous, active root systems capable of withstanding stresses-an aspect of gardening that rarely receives sufficient attention. Tailored for readers requiring clear and concise directions, this very practical book is an instruction manual directed at early-stage gardening learners. These include people of all ages and requirements such as new garden owners, allotment-holders, apprentices and students of basic levels in the Royal Horticultural Society's or City & Guilds qualifications, career changers, community gardeners and those needing applied biological knowledge for GCSE examinations.

This step-by-step guide to essential gardening practice is a must-have reference showing modern methods to a new generation of gardeners. Compiled by leading specialists in every area of gardening, the book contains a vast amount of expert information clearly demonstrating the tried-and-tested techniques honed by the world's leading gardening authority. Using more than 1,600 artworks in more than 400 step-by-step sequences, the book covers every aspect of gardening from pruning to sowing, watering to feeding, and propagating to planting. Covering all plants including trees, flowers, shrubs, climbers, lawns, vegetables, fruit and herbs, it shows how to create water features and patios, and add lighting. It also includes organic techniques, recycling and how to treat pests and diseases. The wealth of practical information makes this book an essential purchase for both professional and amateur gardeners.

'The Gardener', is the winning project of the inaugural Syngenta Photography Award. Photographed by Jan Brykczynski, it is an extension of his previous projects in which he travelled to the outer corners of Europe to explore the lives of people in rural areas. This new work looks at how city dwellers try to connect with nature. The book documents urban gardens in Nairobi, New York, Warsaw, and Yerevan in Armenia. Jan Brykczynski approaches it as if the world were a single village, whose inhabitants seek to meet similar, and very human, needs. His focus is on low-income communities where people respond to a basic need rather than any passing fad. When they create their gardens, improvisation is all. The residents of these neighbourhoods make use of what is available - often re-using materials entirely out of context and in truly original ways. His particular interest is the way in which these spaces are arranged and in how structures for cultivation are created spontaneously. In some places these are an expression of group collaboration, in others they highlight individual imagination and the inventiveness of their creators. Yet there are surprising similarities across different continents, evidencing a collective consciousness and a common humanity.