Our penchant for keeping house plants is an ancient practice dating back to the Pharaohs. House Plants explores the stories behind the plants we bring home and how they were transformed from wild plants into members of our households. A billion-dollar global industry, house plants provide an interaction with nature, and contribute to our health, happiness and wellbeing. They also support their own miniature ecosystems and are part of the home biome. Featuring many superb illustrations, House Plants explores both their botanical history and cultural impact, from song (Gracie Fields's Biggest Aspidistra in the World), literature (Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying) and cinema (Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors) to fashion, technology, contemporary design, and painting.

Bees are our most important pollinators and they are in decline the world over. They love to live in urban environments, where it's a short flight path from one type of plant to the next. But conventional gardens that favour lawns and pesticides over flowers and edible plants are scaring the good bugs away. The Bee Friendly Garden is a guide for all gardeners great and small to encouraging bees and other good bugs to your green space. Includes: - How bees forage and why your garden needs them - A comprehensive plant guide to bee friendly plants - Simple changes anybody can make - Ideas for gardens of all sizes - Natural pest control and companion planting advice

This easy-to-use directory is a guide to nearly 200 of the newest and most desirable house plants ? from colourful freesias and cyclamens to exotic orchids and cacti. Organised alphabetically by Latin names for ease of reference, the title is laid out so that the maximum amount of information is presented in the clearest possible way. It offers tips on creating the optimum growing conditions for your plants, from location to lighting and watering. There is advice on selecting, potting, feeding and propagating a wide range of healthy house plants and a wealth of information on using flowers and foliage to transform your home. An introduction gives tips on choosing and buying plants, hints on watering and feeding techniques, information on soil and potting mixtures, and a guide to dealing with common pests and identifying and treating common diseases.

Every garden presents problems of one kind or another. It is inevitably windy, lacking in privacy too shady, badly drained, too large, too small or hopelessly overgrown. "Garden Rescue" is written to help gardeners to develop, reclaim or maintain their gardens more successfully, not only be surmounting problems, but often by turning them to advantage. Originally published as "Your Problem Garden" and revised and updated, this classic book seeks to explain not just the 'how' of the gardening, but the 'why' as well. Rather than trotting out cliched solutions, Richard Bisgrove helps the reader to understand the unique challenges posed by their gardens in order to come up with a tailor-made rescue package. Climate, soil character, planning and maintenance are all discussed, and there is a useful chapter devoted to recovering a garden that is in a poor state of repair.

This is a very accessible history of the vices and virtues of British gardeners through the ages, particularly those who shaped the National Trust gardens. For a lighthearted look at the history of gardens through the characters who owned and created them, this book offers stories of greed, gluttony, pride, lust, wrath, sloth and envy, alongside the glaring opposite - tales of great kindness, love and generosity. From the garden owner who blew more money on ferns in one shopping trip than she paid her Head Gardener in a year, to Winston Churchill, wading knee-deep in the mud of his beloved garden at Chartwell, and from the intrepid plant hunters of the 19th century to the landowner who replaced an entire village with a more attractive bluebell wood, these stories of gardens, their owners and their gardeners are filled with history and intrigue.

Vintage pieces are set in scene in more than 410 photos. Whether from metal objects, old household items or circus caravans. Let yourself be inspired by great and unusual ideas.