A full-colour and beautifully illustrated guide into transforming your existing garden or plot of land into a modern, visually-stunning - but also easily achieved and maintained - space. Including full-colour images and tips and tricks from gardening experts and Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal winners Harry and David Rich as well as suggestions tailored to various garden types, this is a must-read for anyone wanting that little bit of paradise to escape to at home... 'Full of creativity and good ideas... plenty here to whet the appetite of an aspiring garden designer' -- Gardens Illustrated 'Love Your Plot is a book to read right through and then dip into again to bring a particular idea or method of working back into focus.' -- Garden Design Journal 'Very inspiring' -- ***** Reader review 'This book is a joy to own, beautifully written and illustrated. It's crammed with information, easy to read and fantastic inspiration' -- ***** Reader review 'Awesome book. Clear and easy to understand with lots of useful tips' -- ***** Reader review 'Best book ever for any garden designer - an excellent read' -- ***** Reader review 'A gold mine of garden design wisdom' -- ***** Reader review ***************************************************************************************************** Fusing conceptual garden design with the beauty of the natural landscape, twice Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal winners and stars of BBC's Garden Rescue Harry and David Rich are here to show you how you can transform your outdoor space into a beautiful Eden, no matter what plot you have. In Love Your Plot Harry and David set out to help you transform your outdoor space into an inspiration green haven by making nature work for you. Fusing different outdoor elements, such as coastal and woodland landscapes, alongside key design principles, they will show you how to create a modern, practical and visually stunning outdoor space that will awe and inspire - and that is crucially easy to maintain. Complete with practical tips, unique sketches and designs, planting suggestions and stunning full-colour visuals, Love Your Plot will have you reaching for the spade and wellies in no time at all to create your own Eden, no matter what plot you've got.

Fern Fever (or Pteridomania, to give it its official name), hit Britain between 1837 and 1914 and peaked between 1840 and 1890. Although in previous centuries ferns played an important role in customs and folklore, it was only in this period that they were coveted for aesthetic reasons and that man's passion for them reached its zenith.
The craze for collecting ferns reached such epidemic proportions that it affected the very existence of some species. The fern craze started to gather momentum in the 1840s; books and magazines maintained that fern growing was a hobby that anyone could enjoy as ferns would grow in the glazed fernery, garden, shady yard, window box or even indoors in Wardian Cases. The mania also spread from the living plant to depicting it in architecture and the decorative arts. Even roads, villas and terraced houses were named after the fern.
This book, the first to deal exclusively with the subject for nearly forty years, looks at the how the craze developed, the ways in which ferns were incorporated into garden and home, and the spread of the fern through Victorian material and visual culture.

Whatever your level of expertise, you'll find everything you need to know in this easy-to-follow gardening guide. This book contains the principles of good gardening - how plants work and how to give them what they need. It also includes step-by-step advice, tips and techniques. Keen on starting your own garden or looking for gardening tips to improve your existing gardening skills? This simple step-by-step guide will show you where to start, what tools and techniques to use, and how to troubleshoot common garden problems. From bulbs to borders, weeds to watering, pick up gardening techniques, practical basics, and simple skills which will have your garden blooming. Master the essentials of gardening through easy to follow steps and photographs. This beginner's gardening book will make growing your own garden easy and enjoyable. It includes: - The latest environmentally friendly practices - A new section of growing fruit, vegetables, herbs, shrubs, bulbs, and more - Easy instructions on how to grow a garden and clear photographs Start A Garden And Watch It Grow Share in the delight of gardening when you start using RHS How to Garden New Edition as your guide. You'll quickly become engrossed in the fun, rewarding gardening experience and the sense of accomplishment when you see your shrubs grow or eat vegetables that you've planted.

The ideal gift for gardeners - discover more than 15,000 beautiful plants and learn how to successfully grow each one with this definitive planting guide now in its fully updated 4th edition. The RHS A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants has been compiled by an unrivalled team of over 70 plant experts led by Chris Brickell, the former Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society and a globally renowned plantsman. This latest edition of the world's most comprehensive garden plant encyclopedia has undergone the greatest update since its first publication, with more than 5,000 new entries added and 6,000 superb images featuring fresh new photography. Whether you're looking for inspiration for an unusual new flowering plant to grow, want to identify an amazing orchid you've seen, or need to find out how to keep alive the cactus you've been gifted - the A-Z is bound to have the answer.

This work offers a new approach to planning and planting. It shows how to throw caution to the wind and orchestrate colours, textures, scale and scent to spectacular effect from spring until autumn. The key is colour: intense, strong and voluptuous - deep crimsons combined with acid green and incandescent orange, for example. Integral to Sarak Raven's vision is a feeling for dramatic scale: plants with huge presence, architectural foliage, strong, sculptural shapes. To complete the effect, she includes flowers with silken and velvety textures and describes how to flood the garden with scent. There are schemes for sunny, open beds and borders for shady areas, for damp soils and to clothe walls and fences - many of which include lots of quick-growing annuals and take only a season to achieve.

Americans love their lawns with a passion rarely seen in other countries; fifty-eight million Americans enthusiastically plant, weed, water, spray, and mow an estimated twenty million acres of lawn. But is our dedication to these lawns contributing to the serious environmental problems facing the planet? The authors in this book state that the lawn may be an ecological anachronism, and they argue that we must rethink the way we care for our lawns so that these small pieces of the environment will demonstrate our commitment to a more ecologically sound world. The authors outline the origins of ideas about the lawn and the reasons for its enduring popularity. They describe the development of ideas about its form and the making of the lawn into an object of beauty. They explain how the lawn industry has encouraged the spread of the "industrial" lawn to sustain high sales of mowers, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation equipment. However, say the authors, Industrial Lawns can have high environmental costs: for example, power motors contribute to regional air pollution and global warming; excess fertilizers and pesticides wash off our lawns and run into our wells, streams, and lakes; grass clippings that are bagged and hauled away are major contributors to solid waste problems; and the watering of lawns depletes scarce water supplies. How can we create environmentally sound lawns? The authors offer a variety of ideas - such as moderation in our use of lawn supplements, ecological use of grass varieties, the substitution of hand mowers for power motors, and the use of grass clippings to fertilize the lawn. These strategies can help us to care for conventional lawns in ways lessdangerous to the environment. They also propose two more radical alternatives: Freedom Lawns that allow natural and unrestricted growth of grasses, clover, wildflowers, and other broad-leafed herbaceous plants; and total replacement of the lawn with new landscape designs. By choosing these alternatives - which can be aesthetically pleasing as well as ecologically correct - we can unite our environmental concerns with direct personal action, acting locally while thinking globally and creating a new garden aesthetic in the process.

Carnivorous plants are surprisingly easy to grow and range from the well-known Venus Flytrap to pitcher plants that can digest an entire rat. Peter D'Amato explains the ins and outs of choosing and cultivating these fascinating species.

In the modern suburban landscape, beautiful, green lawns are perhaps the most ubiquitous feature of all. It s difficult to imagine a friendly neighborhood without broad, clean stretches of neatly shorn grass. More and more in recent years, those lawns are evolving into organic systems as homeowners concerned about the long-term effects of chemicals on their children, their pets, and the environment turn to natural methods to keep their yards healthy and inviting, and, yes, still green and lush, too.
Paul Tukey, a self-confessed mowing addict, answers the growing demand for organic grass with a comprehensive volume of natural lawncare information. Step by step, he takes readers through the many elements that work together to form a healthy, organic lawn. Well-treated soil, fed properly with compost and natural fertilizers, is the foundation of every great lawn. Plant it with a grass cultivar matched properly to the climate and sunlight, nourish the soil and grass with the proper amount of water, and maintain the height with a good mower equipped with a sharp blade. A beautiful, naturally maintained lawn can be as simple as that.
An organic, healthy lawn is the best defense against weeds and pests, but when unwanted visitors creep in, Tukey is ready with Weed and Thug ID Guides and advice on dispatching them naturally or learning to live with the benign offenders. Tukey also provides helpful advice for lawnkeepers making the transition from a synthetic to an organic lawn system. It s all here everything today s homeowner needs to keep his lawn off drugs, and make it an inviting living and play area for the whole family."

Every gardener loves perennials. Buy them and plant them, and most will flourish and even expand year after year. But in addition to reliability, perennials offer gardeners a wonderful opportunity to make a stunning visual statement in their home landscapes - if you know how to combine and arrange them. In THE PERENNIAL GARDENER'S DEISGN PRIMER, Stephanie Cohen and Nancy Ondra, two top garden writers and teachers, offer fun, organized, and - most important - attainable advice on how to create gorgeous gardens using these beloved plants. Cohen and Ondra walk the gardener step-by- step through the process of creating new gardens, as well as of bringing new life to gardens that have lost their lustre. They explain how to pick perennials that suit the site by making the most of plant colour, shape, size, and texture; and how to create eye-catching plant combinations. Beautiful illustrations accompany the new garden plans, and stunning photographs capture how Cohen and Ondra have redesigned their own gardens. Throughout the book, a lively dialogue between Cohen and Ondra encourages readers to experiment and to create their own satisfying designs. The authors also offer down-to-earth design solutions for 20 specific types of gardens, including everything from a minimum maintenance garden to a more complex container garden, from planting a formal border to indulging in the controlled chaos of a cottage garden. Whether you are breaking ground for a new garden, or revitalizing an existing bed, THE PERENNIAL GARDENER'S DESIGN PRIMER can help every gardener achieve great results - year after year.

Compiled by two distinguished professors of horticulture, "The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation" is a must for professionals and students of horticulture. Over 1,100 species and their propagation requirements by seeds, cuttings, grafting and budding, and tissue culture are discussed in exhaustive detail. Essentially a recipe book for making more trees and shrubs, this reference is a high-level how-to.

Botany for gardeners offers an explanation of how plants grow. What happens inside a seed after it is planted? How are plants structured? How do plants adapt to their environment? How is water transported from soil to leaves? Why are minerals, air and light important for healthy plant growth? How do plants reproduce? The answers to these and other questions about complex plant processes, written in everyday language, allow gardeners and horticulturists to understand plants from the "plant's point of view". An appendix on plant taxonomy, glossary and make this an essential reference book for serious gardeners.

First published thirty years ago, the long-awaited second edition of "Growing California Native Plants" is the ideal hands-on native plant guide for both experienced and novice gardeners. In addition to the voluminous knowledge contributed by Marjorie G. Schmidt, now deceased, Katherine L. Greenberg has taken note of the vibrant state of today's horticultural scene, adding plants and ideas that were little known when the book first appeared. Lavishly illustrated with 200 new color photographs, drawings, maps, and charts, this concise and easy-to-use reference covers trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, bulbs, grasses, and vines, and includes a plant selection guide for quick reference. The authors, whose combined experience spans six decades, take California's summer-dry climate and restricted water supplies into account and provide helpful notes on companion plants and gardening with wildlife. Practical and informative, "Growing California Native Plants" is a valuable reference for gardeners everywhere in California and an enjoyable book simply to explore.