This is a practical gardener's guide for animal lovers, including planting advice, designs and 90 step-by-step projects, with 1700 photographs. Turn your garden into a wildlife haven by growing the right plants to encourage beneficial insects, aquatic life, birds and animals. It includes illustrated directories of over 200 plant species, from annuals to climbers, with practical advice on cultivation and uses, plus 80 of the most common garden bird species, with identification illustrations and natural history information on distribution, size, distinguishing characteristics, behaviour, nesting, eggs and feeding habits. It includes practical step-by-step projects that show you how to make all kinds of birdhouses, bird tables, birdbaths, wildlife stacks and more. It features all the basic gardening techniques such as plant propagation, soil preparation, composting and general maintenance. Itis illustrated throughout with over 1700 practical colour artworks and photographs. One of the most enjoyable aspects of creating and maintaining a garden lies in the feeling of closeness to nature. Now, with this new book box set, you can encourage hidden birds, animal and insects to proliferate in your very own back garden. These two books, written by award-winning gardening experts, give clear advice on how to create a range of wildlife gardens, showing how adopting a few simple methods will produce a dazzling display of colour while helping native animal species. There are suggestions for the best flowers, shrubs, hedges and trees to attract birds, including a design for a garden border that will provide food throughout the seasons. Comprehensive directories explore over 200 beautiful garden plants, plus over 80 of the most common birds, insects and animals, from woodland and countryside locations to town and city environments. With its helpful practical advice and over 1700 photographs and illustrations, this is the ideal source book for gardeners, bird lovers and wildlife enthusiasts.

Brandywine Cottage is David Culp's beloved two-acre Pennsylvania garden where he mastered the design technique of layering -- interplanting many different species in the same area so that as one plant passes its peak, another takes over. The result is a nonstop parade of color that begins with a tapestry of heirloom daffodils and hellebores in spring and ends with a jewel-like blend of Asian wildflowers at the onset of winter.

"The Layered Garden" shows you how to recreate Culp's majestic display. It starts with a basic lesson in layering -- how to choose the correct plants by understanding how they grow and change throughout the seasons, how to design a layered garden, and how to maintain it. To illustrate how layering works, Culp takes you on a personal tour through each part of his celebrated garden: the woodland garden, the perennial border, the kitchen garden, the shrubbery, and the walled garden. The book culminates with a chapter dedicated to signature plants for all four seasons.

As practical as it is inspiring, "The Layered Garden" will provide you with expert information gleaned from decades of hard work and close observation. If you thought that a four-season garden was beyond your reach, this book will show you how to achieve that elusive, tantalizing goal.

An insider's guide to the world's greatest 'secret' gardens, green spaces, and pocket parks tucked away in cities around the globe

Cities everywhere are graced with charming but little-known, off-the-beaten-track gardens and green spaces, offering urbanites in the know a chance to immerse themselves in nature. These often small, well-kept secrets are not as grand as those on the tourist trail but are equally delightful and rewarding to visit, if you know where to find them. Green Escapes is the revelatory insider's guide to these secret gems. Each of them open to the public, the gardens range from pocket parks, courtyards, and rooftop terraces, to community gardens and more.

After moving from the Barleywood garden where he hosted "BBC Gardeners' World" for seven years, Alan Titchmarsh set up home in an old farmhouse a few miles down the road, and went about planting his own private eden away from the public eye. In this new diary Alan finally reveals all about this secret garden, explaining with his trademark warmth the personal stories behind its design and evolution. Accompanied by beautiful photographs taken by Jonathan Buckley throughout the five years in which the garden has been made, "My Secret Garden" allows us access to all of the successes and failures of this diverse and ambitious project.
Comprising many different styles and spaces -- from an acre of formal beds and ponds to wild flower meadows and a stunning winter garden -- Alan's tales of development and cultivation will be applicable to all gardeners. With the plot encompassing raised vegetable gardens and fruit trees, a handsome greenhouse and wildlife-friendly plantings, gardeners of all styles and levels of expertise will find something to enjoy. Driven by Alan's infectious and informative style, "My Secret Garden" is a fascinating, amusing and inspiring book.

A follow-up to Black Dog's bestselling "Country Wisdom and Know-How," the "Country Wisdom Almanac" provides hundreds of ideas and methods for living the good and simple life, plus information on weather, gardening, buying produce and cooking by season, holidays, frost dates, moon phases, and more.
Divided into the four seasons and then organized into 373 individual tips, the "Country Wisdom Almanac" presents a wide variety of ways to live a simpler, more self-sustained life year round. Each season offers home-improvement ideas (wallpaper a room in the Fall or build a stone wall in the Spring), crafts (create gorgeous homemade decorations for Christmas, Halloween, or the Fourth of July), recipes (use seasonal produce to create fresh, healthy meals), gardening advice (what and when to plant in order to get the maximum results from your land), and more.
Also included is year-round advice on caring for pets, creating your own health and beauty remedies, canning and preserving food, and more. Each season opens with a list of holidays and a guide to in-season produce. Appendices cover average weather by city and month, frost dates, and moon phases.

A testament to the influential nature of educational and community gardening programs for teens Part engaging conversation, part comprehensive fieldwork, Growing a Life demonstrates just how influential educational and community gardening programs can be for young teens. Follow author Illene Pevec as she travels from rural Colorado to inner city New York, agrarian New Mexico to Oakland, California, in order to study youth gardening and the benefits it contributes to at-risk teen lives. Extensive research, supplemented by beautifully candid interviews with students, illustrate the life altering physical and mental benefits that mentored gardening programs can provide. Giving readers the opportunity to examine the largely unexplored topic of urban gardening, the programs discussed present models for future educational and community based gardens. Each destination brings with it an abundance of programs geared toward educating teens by giving them the tools they will need in order to have fruitful futures. With an emphasis on positive psychology, Growing a Life delves into the minds of underprivileged teens and what gardening means to them.

In the DONE IN A DAY series, a step-by-step instruction book containing twelve basic projects for the garden, each of which can be completed in one day. Each project can be personalized by variations and is illustrated with photographs and exploded diagrams.

The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, this book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household waste water, perhaps two hundred dollars worth of hand tools, and about the same amount spent on supplies - working an average of two hours a day during the growing season. Steve Solomon is a well-known west coast gardener and author of five previous books, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades which has appeared in five editions.

Why do so many people love gardening? What does your garden say about you? What is guerrilla gardening? The Psychology of Gardening delves into the huge benefits that gardening can have on our health and emotional well-being, and how this could impact on the entire public health of a country. It also explores what our gardens can tell us about our personalities, how we can link gardening to mindfulness and restoration, and what motivates someone to become a professional gardener. With gardening being an ever popular pastime, The Psychology of Gardening provides a fascinating insight into our relationships with our gardens.

'Britain's ten million acres of private gardens add up to a vital haven for wildlife. Chock-a-block with ideas for encouraging wildlife into your plot, this pocket-sized book tells you how to make your off-street parking wildlife-friendly, why you should welcome wasps into the garden and whether you should let ladybirds overwinter in your home. One for budding David Attenboroughs.' - Mail on Sunday Foreword written by Isabella Tree of the Knepp Wildland Project. RHS How Can I Help Hedgehogs? offers more than 100 ideas for you to help wildlife thrive in your garden. Packed with simple, low-cost ideas that will make a huge difference to the natural world, the book suggests ways to help birds, bees, butterflies, beetles and many other declining species. Hopeful, informative and entertaining, with plenty of 'I-never-knew-that' mini-features, this is a book you and your family need, and one that you'll all enjoy, too. Includes topics such as how to increase the biodiversity of your plot and how to improve your soil without using chemicals. Includes... - Can I make my garden bat-friendly? - Do green roofs work? - Why should I love my weeds? - Should I keep honey bees? - Which flowers are friendliest for moths? - Where's best for a bird box? - Is garden lighting disruptive? ...and many more.

You know you're a gardening fanatic when... ... you favour your ride-on lawnmower over your Ferrari. ... you think talking dirty means whispering the word 'compost'. If this sounds all too familiar, read on to discover whether you've really gone to seed or you're just one petal short of a flower!

What do you do when you find yourself living as a stranger? When Beth Lynch moved to Switzerland, she quickly realised that the sheer will to connect with people would not guarantee a happy relocation. Out of place and lonely, Beth knows that she needs to get her hands dirty if she is to put down roots. And so she sets about making herself at home in the way she knows best - by tending a garden, growing things. The search for a garden takes her across the country, through meadows and on mountain paths where familiar garden plants run wild, to the rugged hills of the Swiss Jura. In this remote and unfamiliar place of glow worms and dormice and singing toads she learns to garden in a new way, taking her cue from the natural world. As she plants her paradise with hellebores and aquilegias, cornflowers and Japanese anemones, these cherished species forge green and deepening connections: to her new soil, to her old life in England, and to her deceased parents, whose Sussex garden continues to flourish in her heart. WHERE THE HORNBEAM GROWS is a memoir about carrying a garden inwardly through loss, dislocation and relocation, about finding a sense of wellbeing in a green place of your own, and about the limits of paradise in a peopled world. It is a powerful exploration by a dazzling new literary voice of how, in nurturing a corner of the natural world, we ourselves are nurtured.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Garden Practices and Their Science guides gardeners in the practical arts of plant husbandry and in their understanding of its underpinning principles. The author, Professor Geoff Dixon, is an acknowledged and internationally respected horticulturist and microbiologist; he intertwines these arts and principles carefully, expertly leading readers from one to the other. Achieving the manipulation of plant life is described in eight full-colour, well-illustrated chapters covering the growing of potatoes, bulb onions, legumes, small-seeded vegetables, soft fruit, bulbs and herbaceous ornamentals in great detail. Environmental factors controlling the successful husbandry of these crops is described in simple, non-technical language, increasing gardeners' enjoyment and competence. Gardeners are also informed of the tools and equipment they require and their safe use. Also provided are a series of simple, straightforward tests identifying the aerial and soil environments beneficial for plant growth using readily accessible domestic tools. Discussions of very straightforward techniques for vegetative propagation conclude this book. Each chapter ends with a list of the gardening knowledge that has been gained by readers. The structure of this book fulfils a longstanding need for descriptions of practical skills integrated with the corresponding biological reactions of plants. Emphasis is placed on gardeners' development of healthy soils, which encourage vigorous, active root systems capable of withstanding stresses-an aspect of gardening that rarely receives sufficient attention. Tailored for readers requiring clear and concise directions, this very practical book is an instruction manual directed at early-stage gardening learners. These include people of all ages and requirements such as new garden owners, allotment-holders, apprentices and students of basic levels in the Royal Horticultural Society's or City & Guilds qualifications, career changers, community gardeners and those needing applied biological knowledge for GCSE examinations.

'I planted a dog rose. Then I found a curious piece of driftwood and used this, and one of the necklaces of holey stones on the wall, to stake the rose. The garden had begun. I saw it as a therapy and a pharmacopoeia.' In 1986 artist and filmmaker, Derek Jarman, bought Prospect Cottage, a Victorian fisherman's hut on the desert sands of Dungeness. It was to be a home and refuge for Jarman throughout his HIV diagnosis, and it would provide the stage for one of his most enduring, if transitory projects - his garden. Conceived of as a 'pharmacopoeia' - an ever-evolving circle of stones, plants and flotsam sculptures all built and grown in spite of the bracing winds and arid shingle - it remains today a site of fascination and wonder. Pharmacopoeia brings together the best of Derek Jarman's writing on nature, gardening and Prospect Cottage. Told through journal entries, poems and fragments of prose, it paints a portrait of Jarman's personal and artistic reliance on the space Dungeness offered him, and shows the cycle of the years spent there in one moving collage. '[Derek] made of this wee house, his wooden tent pitched in the wilderness, an artwork - and out of its shingle skirts, an ingenious garden - now internationally recognised. But, first and foremost, the cottage was always a living thing, a practical toolbox for his work' Tilda Swinton, from her Foreword

Food - how it's grown, how it's shared - makes us who we are. This issue traces the connections between farm and food, between humus and human. According to the first book of the Bible, tending the earth was humankind's first task: "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8). The desire to get one's hands dirty raising one's own food, then, doesn't just come from modern romanticism, but is built into human nature. The title, "The Welcome Table," comes from a spiritual first sung by enslaved African-Americans. The song refers to the Bible's closing scene, the wedding feast of the Lamb described in the Book of Revelation, to which every race, tribe, and tongue are invited - a divine pledge of a day of freedom and freely shared plenty, of earth renewed and humanity restored. In the case of food, the symbol is the substance. Every meal, if shared generously and with radical hospitality, is already now a taste of the feast to come. Also in this issue: poetry by Luci Shaw; reviews of books by Julia Child, Robert Farrar Capon, Peter Mayle, Albert Woodfox, and Maria von Trapp; and art by Michael Naples, Sieger Koeder, Carl Juste, Andre Chung, Angel Bracho, Winslow Homer, Raymond Logan, Sybil Andrews, Cameron Davidson, and Jason Landsel. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

With the increased interest in and demands for compost from commercial horticultural industries, composting is on the verge of becoming an economically feasible option for waste management. While horticultural producers can create some of the compost to meet their own needs, demand has grown beyond what they can supply for themselves and others. Compost Utilization in Horticultural Cropping Systems gives you the tools to meet the needs of this growing industry.
Consider these statistics:
o Americans generate about 200 million megagrams of municipal solid waste per year
o The agricultural market for compost could reach over 680 million m3 per year
o Two horticultural areas together account for over 50% of compost use: landscaping (31%) and food crop production (25%)
Now consider this:
o Proven benefits of compost use, including plant disease suppression, better moisture retention, supplying plant nutrients, and building soil organic matter
o Increased pressure on peat supplies and wider availability of compost products
o Creation of composting enterprises by the horticultural industry in response to its own needs, rising disposal fees for organic waste, and consumer demand for compost at retail centers
The first book to establish a composite of the existing scientific knowledge on the use of compost in commercial horticultural enterprises, Compost Utilization in Horticultural Cropping Systems gives you a comprehensive review of the production, use, and economics of compost. It covers production methods, compost quality and the parameters associated with its measurement, and the biological, chemical, and physical processes that occur during composting. Rather than searching for information in various places, now you can find all the information you need in one convenient source.

Live a more sustainable lifestyle Historically referred to as a government program for revitalizing undesirable living areas, "homesteading" today has come to mean the pursuit of a self-sufficient lifestyle. Homesteading can include everything from keeping bees, growing vegetables, and composting to installing solar panels, creating a rain barrel, and canning your own food, --plus much more. Backyard Homesteading All-in-One For Dummies has a little bit of everything for the homesteader in all of us. It walks you through the basics of creating your own sustainable homestead and offers expert tips and tricks for making it as easy and successful as possible. Raise chickens Keep bees Compost Can and preserve This book gives you everything you need to embark on your own homesteading adventure.

It's possible to create a productive garden with very few inputs, no fertilizer, and no tilling. Grow Your Soil! guides home gardeners through the process of creating and maintaining rich, dark, crumbly soil that's teeming with life while cultivating a beautiful, bountiful garden. With a combination of cover crops, constant mulching, and a simple-but-supercharged recipe for compost tea, author Diane Miessler shares with readers the techniques she used to transformed her own land over the course of a decade from a roadside dump for broken asphalt into a garden that literally stops traffic.

Challenged to prove her claim that an 18th-century diet was better than today's, for a full year Fiona J Houston recreated the lifestyle of her 1790s rural Scottish ancestors in a basic one-roomed cottage, cooking from her garden and the wild, often entertaining family and friends, and surviving on her own resources. She learned lost crafts and skills, making nettle string, quill pens and ink as well as cheese and ale, lighting her fire from flints, and dressing in hand-sewn period clothing, with nothing but an old range stove and candles for warmth and light. This beautiful, quirky, illustrated title tells her extraordinary story and is packed with historical anecdotes, folklore, practical gardening info, seasonal menus, recipes, wildlife notes and more. Includes linocuts, photos and historic engravings.

Deepen your love of the garden with Lorene Edwards Forkner's inspirational advice on gardening, mindfulness, and life-plus easy instructions for capturing favorite botanical colors with a few simple brushstrokes If you love flowers and the rich hues of the garden, Color In and Out of the Garden is for you. Author and garden expert Lorene Edwards Forkner shares her gardening wisdom and life advice in this delightfully useful and addictively readable little book. Along the way, she also demonstrates quick and easy techniques for keeping a garden journal so you can record your favorite plants with just a few simple brushstrokes. Arranged by color, each chapter helps readers be in the moment, sharpen their powers of observation, and capture nature's most lovely hues. Plant profiles, practical advice, and personal reflections mingle with creative prompts for creating a simple watercolor that helps focus one's attention. Color symbolism, such as red representing energy, yellow for memory, and green for growth, is also explored. Illustrated with beautiful photographs, the book invites readers to slow down, look attentively, and to appreciate the world around them. Both a mindfulness exercise for seeing garden colors and an easy guide to reproducing them on the page, Color In and Out of the Garden is as satisfying to read as it is to use. Forkner guides readers through the spectrum with her own watercolors while offering color inspiration and a delightful garden respite from everyday stress.

"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

"Britain's Greatest Gardeners" distills the wisdom of Britain's top gardeners, the men and women who look after the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society. The book ties in to a 6-part series on BBC2, presented by Rachel de Thame, and details everything covered in the programme and more besides - from how the experts produce a perfect punnet of strawberries to how they restore their beautiful lawns after thousands of visitors have reduced them to mud.;Divided into eight chapters - Roses; Perennials and Grasses; Lawns; Edibles; Water; Climbers; Trees and Shrubs; and Pests, Diseases and Weeds - the book covers the principal aspects of gardening. The text is peppered with RHS know-how tips and each chapter includes a step-by-step masterclass by a top RHS expert covering a practical aspect of gardening.

The official Royal Horticultural Society week-to-week desk diary contains a beautiful collection of plant illustrations, making this the perfect gift for all gardeners and plant lovers. The Royal Horticultural Society Diary 2024 brings together a selection of rare and beautiful works by artist Priscilla Bury (1799-1872) from the RHS Lindley Collections. The diary features work from the splendid publication A Selection of Hexandrian Plants alongside some of Bury's striking creations for The Botanist, showcasing her keen eye for detail. This beautifully produced diary is illustrated in colour throughout, with a silk ribbon marker and internal storage pocket, so you can organise your week in style. This desk diary is perfect for use in office, or to add a spot of colour to your home-working set up, the perfect gift for any avid gardener or nature lover!