"There is an odd, subversive book called The Decadent Gardener by Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray. The introduction describes the decadent gardening ethos thus: 'In the garden, the decadent seeks to create a moment of beauty, which should be allowed to fall into decay and ruin.'Gardening, Lucan and Gray believe, is 'little more than systematic violence in pursuit of beauty', and the gardener is first and foremost a sadist. These two, the Kropotkin and De Sade of horticulture, understand that'nowhere are sex and death more intimately bound together than in the garden.' For them the garden is a place of 'agony, self-doubt and betrayal.' They remind us that, if we are to believe the Bible - not that they would be inclined to - the first murder was carried out by a gardener.And the first garden was a place where sin beckoned wherever you turned.The book abounds with piercing, pricking truths.The flower, they remind us, for example, is nothing but a sexual organ.The Decadent Garden consists of the plans for a series of thematic gardens that Lucan and Gray had conceived for a wealthy patroness. Each garden would symbolise an aspect of nature as they saw it. The Cruel Garden would consist largely of impenetrable thickets of thorns.The Fatal Garden would contain only representatives of the vegetable world's many poisonous denizens: among them, black bryony, dropwort and, of course, deadly nightshade.In the Narcotic Garden, by the side of the opium poppy and cannabis sativa, would grow more obscure mind-altering plants such as mandrake, henbane and thornapple. The Priapic Garden would be populated by those species whose flowers and foliage assumed the most suggestive phallic and vulvic shapes.Their Torture Garden carried the libertine ideas of Lucan and Gray furthest and is perhaps best left to the reader's imagination.Because Lucan and Gray barely realised their designs(they were too decadent to bother), their gardens flourish mainly in the mind."

Gardening in Arabia: Fruiting Plants in Qatar and the Arabian Gulf features 35 types of fruit trees and plants that are grown in our beloved country, Qatar, and in other Arabian Gulf countries. These are trees and plants that have shown their ability to thrive in this unique and challenging climate, producing luscious fruits of exceptional flavor. Trees and plants detailed in this book range from bananas to strawberries. There is a special section on date palms, an essential part of Middle Eastern culture and diet for millennia. Here you will find the scientific name of every tree and plant, along with their English names, and a full description of each. There is useful advice on where, when and how to cultivate these trees and plants in your own garden, and how to treat their most commonpests and diseases. The uses of each plant is also featured. Stunning photographs throughout will allow you to recognise the trees and plants and to enjoy their remarkable beauty.

Whether your aspirations are simply to sell a selection of home grown plants from the boot of your car or to establish a succesful all-year-round gardening business, this book will show you how. It covers: preparing your business plan; getting kitted out; how to find work - and keep it; what services to offer; book-keeping for gardeners; planning the gardening year; how to get commercial contracts; providing estimates; the top ten most profitable gardening jobs.

Backyard Farming: Growing Herbs for Food and Medicine is your one-stop guide for growing and utilising herbs in your life. Intended to serve as a comprehensive primer for first-time gardeners, detailed illustrations and informative photographs help to eliminate confusion and ease new homesteaders into the world of backyard farming. Growing Herbs for Food and Medicine includes not only instructions on planting, but goes into detail on the many different kinds of ways to use herbs such as marinades and garnishes for your meals or as natural remedies and medicinal cures for what ails you.

In diesem Band werden die wichtigsten Charakteristika von Flusseinzugsgebieten behandelt - Kleineinzugsgebiete und mesoskalige Einzugsgebiete, Abflussdynamik, Stofftransport und Stoffaustrage, Einfluss von Hochwasserereignissen in unterschiedlichen Raumskalen, Sickerwasserraten sowie eine mesoskalige Landschaftsanalyse. Dabei wird gezeigt, wie auf unterschiedlichen Skalenniveaus differenzierte Fragestellungen entstehen und mit einem angepassten Methodenspektrum beantwortet werden konnen. Daruber hinaus behandeln mehrere Beitrage explizit die Vorgaben der EU-WRRL aus umweltokonomischer Sicht. Kommunalpolitiker, Raum- und Landschaftsplaner, Naturschutzbeauftragte sowie Juristen, Okonomen und Umweltwissenschaftler, die mit der Umsetzung der EU-WRRL betraut sind, erhalten mit diesem Band wichtige Entscheidungshilfen. Die Fallbeispielsammlung ist sowohl fur Praktiker als auch fur Wissenschaftler und Studierende von hohem Nutzen."

It all began when Simon Griffiths decided that he and his whippet couldn't live in his tiny but gorgeous one-up one-down shopfront in Melbourne any more. He had a yearning for open spaces, country air and, most importantly, a garden of his own. On finding his cottage in Meadowbank, just outside Sydney, and trialling different plants, he gradually became part of the secret gardening network - the one where cuttings are exchanged between friends, and planting successes and failures are recounted over neighbourhood fences. Simon is a brilliant photographer, bringing warmth and joy to all his subjects, but he is also a very knowledgeable plantsman. In this book he has captured his favourite twenty country-style gardens and shares the knowledge he has gleaned from fellow garden lovers.

Originally published in 1982, this bestselling collection of gardening writing by William Lanier Hunt--one of the South's leading gardening writers and horticulturalists--is now available for the first time in paperback. Arranged by months of the year, "Southern Gardens, Southern Gardening" is filled with useful, commensense instruction, as well as the wisdom and art of gardening.

Ever since she was old enough to help her grandmother in the garden, Sharon Lovejoy has spent her life working with plants--and along the way, through "trowel and error," she's accumulated hundreds and hundreds of remedies, tips, short-cuts, and cure-alls. Now Ms. Lovejoy--author of "Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots" and the award-winning "Sunflower Houses"--does for the garden what Heloise or the Queen of Clean does for the household. "Trowel and Error" collects all of her homespun garden advice into an inviting, environmentally friendly, whimsically illustrated yet dead-on helpful book that will benefit every gardener, beginner or experienced.
Cure plant viruses with spoiled milk. Steep a natural and effective insecticide out of fresh basil. Place flat stones under squash or melons to hasten ripening. Recycle an old apple corer as the perfect dibber for muscari and other small bulbs. Start rosemary cuttings in a green glass bottle. Sprinkle baby powder over seedlings to discourage rabbits. Crush a garlic clove and apply it to your skin as an insect repellent. From urging the reader to take an occasional shower with the houseplants to giving all-natural gardenside first aid, "Trowel and Error" is a direct line to the kind of practical wisdom that comes only after a lifetime of experience. The book is indexed by problem, plant, pest, and solution, and includes a list of tools and common household items--borax, cornmeal, vinegar--that completes the gardener's arsenal.