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Books > Health, Home & Family > Gardening > General
Learn all the secrets for creating fertile, productive soil
anywhere. With more than 300 detailed illustrations and at-a-glance
charts, Secrets to Great Soil solves all your soil problems and
gives you techniques for year-round soil building.
InSecrets to Great Soil you'll find:
* The basics of soil pH and nutrients
* Quick methods for making compost
* Instructions for using organic mulches, soil amendments, and
fertilizers
* Ways to customize your soil for a variety of vegetables,
flowers, fruits, trees, shrubs, and lawns
A privileged tour of a lavish estate in Greenwich featuring an
abundance of garden experiences - formal boxwood and undulating
hornbeam hedges, dense woodland, reflecting pools, arbors and
follies - and a ferme ornee offering organic produce to the
community. Sleepy Cat Farm is the vision of one man, Fred Landman,
who acquired the handsome Georgian Revival house and grounds in
1994. Deeply committed to the concept of harmony between house and
garden, he has dedicated himself to the landscape to create a
garden of which the house could be proud. Collaborating with
Greenwich architect Charles Hilton and noted landscape architect
Charles J. Stick and drawing inspiration from travels in Europe and
Asia, Landman has done just that. The landscape unfolds in a series
of garden rooms and pavilions, pathways and pools, statuary and
staircases, trees, shrubs and flowerbeds, hillsides and vistas that
change daily, monthly, almost minute by minute, as the visitor
explores this undulating landscape of surprises, intrigue and
unexpected beauty. Names were given to the various aspects: The
Golden Path, the Grotto, The Iris Garden, the Spirit Walk, the
Perennial Long Border Garden, the Pebble Terrace, the Woodland
Walk. Buildings and follies were added, also with storybook
names--the Celestial Pavilion, the Barn, the Limonaia, the Chinese
Pavilion, the Cat Maze and Arbor. Down the hill from the main house
is an working organic farm that supplies produce to the community,
a project of Landman's wife, Seen Lippert, a professional chef who
worked with Alice Waters in California before moving East. Landman
and Lippert are committed to sharing the beauty that they have
created. They are generous in opening the property for charitable
events and tours of gardeners and horticultural enthusiasts,
particularly through the Open Days program of the Garden
Conservancy. As Landman says, One of my greatest joys is when other
people come here and get to experience what I experience every day.
The most important thing is that they leave happy.
'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of
nature' IRISH TIMES Thirty-four years ago, when they were in their
twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive
decision to leave their lives in New York City and move to
Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural
Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated
themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed
the rhythms of the earth. In 2019, with Christine in the final
stages of recovery from cancer and the land itself threatened by
the arrival of turbines just one farm over, Niall and Christine
decided to document a year of living in their garden and in their
small corner of a rapidly changing world. Proceeding month by month
through the year, this is the story of a garden in all its many
splendours, and a couple who have made their life observing its
wonders.
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