Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural, and Personal History is an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to these remarkable insects. Drawing on her experiences as a natural history instructor, dragonfly monitor, cancer survivor, grandmother, and steward, Crosby tells the stories of dragonflies: their roles in poetry and art, their fascinating sex life - unique within the animal kingdom - and their evolution from dark-water dwellers to denizens of the air. We follow Crosby and other citizen scientists into the prairies, wetlands, and woodlands of the Midwest, where they observe the environment and chronicle dragonfly populations and migration to decipher critical clues about our changing waterways and climate. Woven throughout are personal stories: reflections on the author's cancer diagnosis and recovery, change, loss, aging, family, joy, and discovering what it means to be at home in the natural world. Crosby draws an intimate portrait of a landscape teeming with variety and mystery, one that deserves our attention and conservation. As warm as it is informative, this book will interest gardeners, readers of literary nonfiction, and anyone intrigued by transformation, whether in nature or our personal lives.

A beautiful perpetual calendar and month-by-month guide to gardening in New England that you can use year to year to keep tarck of your garden's progress.

"Growing some fruit, veg and herbs is one of the most life-enhancing, practical and enriching things that anyone with a scrap of land can ever do." - Monty Don Unrivalled gardening wisdom from Britain's favourite gardener. Written as he talks, this is Monty Don right beside you in the garden, challenging norms and sharing his advice based on years of experience. Month-by-month, Monty reveals the jobs he does in his own garden, that he hopes are relevant to you. Discover Monty's thoughts and musings on nature, seasons, colour, design, pests, flowering shrubs, containers, and much more. Monty's intimate and beautifully written narrative is accompanied by photos of his own garden. "You need nature more than she needs you. It is not an equal relationship. Serve her well and she will look after you. Abuse her and everyone loses." - Monty Don

Gain some new ideas along with the principles and history of Japanese stone gardening with this useful and beautiful garden design book. Japanese Stone Gardens provides a comprehensive introduction to the powerful mystique and dynamism of the Japanese stone garden--from their earliest use as props in animistic rituals, to their appropriation by Zen monks and priests to create settings conducive to contemplation and finally to their contemporary uses and meaning. With insightful text and abundant imagery, this book reveals the hidden order of stone gardens and in the process heightens the enthusiast's appreciation of them. The Japanese stone garden is an art form recognized around the globe. These meditative gardens provide tranquil settings, where visitors can shed the burdens and stresses of modern existence, satisfy an age-old yearning for solitude and repose, and experience the restorative power of art and nature. For this reason, the value of the Japanese stone garden today is arguably even greater than when many of them were created. Fifteen gardens are featured in this book: some well known, such as the famous temple gardens of Kyoto, others less so, among them gardens spread through the south of Honshu Island and the southern islands of Shikoku and Kyushu and in faraway Okinawa.

Winner of the Inspirational Book of the Year, Garden Media Guild Awards Ambra Edwards and Charlie Hopkinson explore, in words and pictures, the lives, visions and achievements of fourteen very different head gardeners. "Ambra Edwards's fascinating interviews show what diversity there is in British gardens. It's a book about people and how they tick - people who happen to be gardeners." - The Times "An informative and eye-opening delight." - Philippa Stockley, Country Life "The author, well-known for her sparky writing style and broad hinterland of interests, has interviewed 14 head gardeners in search of some answers, teaming up with the highly empathetic and skilled photographer Charlie Hopkinson to produce this visually appealing and revealing book about some remarkable people in horticulture... Nor is it hard to argue with her view that gardeners are undervalued by society, in status and reward. Let's hope this brilliant book goes some way to redressing that." - Ursula Buchan, The Garden

Home-grown botanical dyes are in, and they're part of today's shift toward natural and organic living. "A new generation discovers grow-it-yourself dyes," says the New York Times. And you don't have to have a degree in chemistry to create your own natural dyes. It just takes a garden plot and a kitchen. A Garden to Dye For shows how super-simple it is to plant and grow a dyer's garden and create beautiful dyes. Many of these plants may already be in our cutting, cottage or food gardens, ready for double duty. These special plants can fit right in with traditional garden themes. A Garden to Dye For features 40-plus plants that the gardener-crafter can grow for an all-natural, customized color palette. A dyer's garden can be a mosaic of flowers, herbs, roots and fruits that lend us their pigments to beautify other areas of our lives. The richly photographed book is divided between the garden and the dye process, with garden layouts, plant profiles, dye extraction and uses, step-by-step recipes and original, engaging DIY projects. This is the book that bridges the topic of plant dyes to mainstream gardeners, the folks who enjoy growing the plants as much as using them in craft projects. www.agardentodyefor; and on Facebook: A Garden to Dye For.

Gardens are immobile, literally rooted in the earth, but they are also shaped by migration and by the transnational movement of ideas, practices, plants, and seeds. In "Paradise Transplanted," Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo reveals how successive conquests and diverse migrations have made Southern California gardens, and in turn how gardens influence social inequality, work, leisure, status, and our experiences of nature and community. Drawing on historical archival research, ethnography, and over one hundred interviews with a wide range of people including suburban homeowners, paid Mexican immigrant gardeners, professionals at the most elite botanical garden in the West, and immigrant community gardeners in the poorest neighborhoods of inner-city Los Angeles, this book offers insights into the ways that diverse global migrations and garden landscapes shape our social world.