What could be better than watching the natural world out your window or on your television? Going out and experiencing it firsthand. In these fifty essays, acclaimed nature and science writer Sy Montgomery takes her readers on a season-by-season tour of the wilderness that is often as close as the backyard. Sy invites -- almost dares -- readers to follow her and form hands-on relationships with the plants, animals, birds, and even the insects that share space with people. These essays, most of which originally appeared in Sy's Boston Globe column Nature Journal, are by turns enlightening, entertaining, sometimes amusing, and always absorbing and informative. Filled with natural history and lore, the essays urge readers to appreciate what they find around them.

Over 340 striking color photos introduce readers to the quintessential flower of the Cape and the Islands, the hydrangea. The lucky people who live in the region revel in these lush flowers flourishing in a maritime climate. Residents and visitors alike enjoy the beautiful displays of hydrangeas in home gardens, outside restaurants and inns, and especially in waterfront areas, where hydrangeas thrive in the sea air. Blue blooms predominate, their naturally cheerful colors echoing the blue of the sea and the sky. Regional gardeners also delight in creating tapestries of color in shades of pink, purple, and blue. This book captures the beauty of hydrangeas and their wide range of uses, both outdoors and indoors, including their frequent appearance in wedding bouquets. From the lacy white flowers of climbing hydrangeas in early spring to the rich burgundy blooms of late fall, hydrangeas bring accents of beauty throughout the growing season.

In "Native American Medicinal Plants," anthropologist Daniel E. Moerman describes the medicinal use of more than 2700 plants by 218 Native American tribes. Information -- adapted from the same research used to create the monumental "Native American Ethnobotany" -- includes 82 categories of medicinal uses, ranging from analgesics, contraceptives, gastrointestinal aids, hypotensive medicines, sedatives, and toothache remedies.
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Native American Medicinal Plants" includes extensive indexes arranged by tribe, usage, and common name, making it easy to access the wealth of information in the detailed catalog of plants. It is an essential reference for students and professionals in the fields of anthropology, botany, and naturopathy and an engaging read for anyone interested in ethnobotany and natural healing.

Companion planting has a long history of use by gardeners, but the explanation of why it works has been filled with folklore and conjecture. Plant Partners delivers a research-based rationale for this ever-popular growing technique, offering gardeners dozens of ways they can use scientifically tested plant partnerships to benefit the garden as a whole. Through an enhanced understanding of how plants interact with and influence each other, this guide suggests specific plant combinations that growers can use to improve soil health and weed control, decrease pest damage, and increase biodiversity, resulting in real and measurable impacts in the garden.

The southeastern coast has an abundance of flowers and trees waiting to be explored. With this book as your guide, learn the history, folklore, and ethno-botany of America's coastal plants from Florida to Virginia. Discover fun facts about each, such as which tree was featured on the cover of a classic book from the 1950s. Find out how a palm tree and our highway system are related and which grass is planted to stop beach erosion. Learn which plants are associated with ancient cultures and held sacred in religious services. The plants are arranged in alphabetical order by botanical name with a common name cross-reference guide for easy use. Over 230 full color photographs, taken in their natural settings, make plant identification easy and accurate. This book is great for botanists, gardeners, nature lovers, and anyone else who appreciates the beauty of plants.

A complete guide to cultivating and harvesting the beautiful opium poppy.
The opium poppy is a potent plant that has been cultivated and used for thousands of years to alleviate suffering. The use of plant substances as alternatives to synthetic medicines is resurging due to their beneficial properties and less-toxic side effects. For example, many cancer and HIV sufferers are growing opium for personal use.
"Opium Poppy Garden" is the only book available that describes the cultivation, harvest and pharmacology of opium in a format that combines literary and instructional writing. The heart of the book is the tale of Ch'ien, a young Chinese man who travels from Costa Rica to Columbia to grow an opium garden in the manner his Taoist grandfather taught him. The story, in conjunction with "The Cultivator's Diary" and the technical appendix, provide the reader with a working knowledge of this plant.

A complete beginner's guide to growing mushrooms. Step-by-step instructions, with drawings and photographs--16 in full color, introduce the novice to the full range of growing methods, from sterile culture procedures--the basis of all tissue culture cloning techniques--to indoor bottle gardens to indoor/outdoor compost gardens. Includes a section on producing small quantities of precisely-mixed compost indoors and a taxonomy of selected psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

In this new book, Johanna Geyer-Kordesch brings together a lifetime of study and personal experience to show the many ways in which gardens matter to our modern society. Reaching back through the centuries, she explores how richly layered our contemporary response to both making and enjoying gardens has become. With an extract from renowned author Donald Smith, Why Gardens Matter provides a unique insight into how the outdoors can help us to find some calm in this increasingly busy world.

This botanical guide to the greater Atlanta region is teeming with more than 200 color photographs, informative gardening tips, and fun facts and stories about the diverse garden flora of the area. Gardeners from Atlanta to Athens, Columbus to Augusta, Macon to Rome, and beyond will find a comprehensive guide to nearly 130 species of flowers, shrubs, deciduous trees, and evergreens. Not only does the guide offer details about the ideal soil and light conditions for these species, it also delves into their history, folklore, and mythology. Whether used as an identification guide, gardening reference, or as an informative and entertaining botanical encyclopedia, green thumbs from all over will appreciate the abundance of Atlanta's plant life. A perfect guide for gardeners, landscape designers, and those interested in ethnobotany.

This revised and updated edition of the classic Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana had complete information on growing marijuana indoors and out. Full of examples, fantastic illustrations and horticultural knowledge. Drake is a leading authority on marijuana cultivation. His book Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana includes information on the marijuana plant, marijuana and land, working with young plants, marijuana and light, harvesting and curing, making a good plant better, cultivation of psychoactive tobacco, and cultivation awareness.

Without fail, visitors to the great gardens of the world are enchanted by their topiary art. These great, green sculptures, often in the form of animals, but sometimes in geometric or abstract shapes, are formed by carefully binding and trimming a living plant. The patience and skill required may seem intimidating to those who wish to try their hands at it, but in this book the art is made accessible to every gardener. Well illustrated, with easy-to-understand instructions, three topiary projects are offered, a peacock (with instructions for its transformation into an angel), a Gothic arch, and a duck. The projects shown use small, potted plants from the nursery, but the techniques are readily adapted to shrubs and bushes in the garden.The tools and materials needed for topiary are common, owned by almost every gardener; with this basic guide, all that is needed is a little creativity and time. The results will astound.

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.

In thousands of years of tilling the soil, we have created a great variety of garden tools to dig, cut scrub, harrow fields, and trim borders. What makes the tools unique, and collectible, is the way function has dictated form, resulting in not only ingenious shapes, but artistic ones. In the 19th and early 20th centuries garden tool catalogs listed hundreds of task-specific tools including dibbers, mattocks, potato hoes, onion hoes, daisy grubbers, claws, weeders, forcers, straighteners, garden row markers, garden reels, rakes, watering cans, water tanks, lawn mowers, lawn rollers, weed whackers, and many many more. This book looks back at two hundred years of garden history, and attempts to identify the tools and accessories that gardeners used, and as much as possible identify their specific functions. With over 750 color photographs, concise captions, and a guide to prices in today's antique marketplace, this is a useful as well as beautiful exploration of garden implements.

Increasingly, outdoor spaces are becoming our haven - somewhere to breathe again, heighten our senses and escape the onslaught of noise, clutter and technology. This book offers ideas and inspiration for making the most of any outdoor space we might have - whether it is a garden, a patio, balcony, or even just a window box - and for bringing touches of nature indoors for mindful enjoyment. Bestselling author Jane Cumberbatch's 'Pure Style' philosophy is all about making the most of what's around you and finding beauty in the simple and everyday as an achievable alternative to the stressful demands of consumer society. In this book, which was put together over the course of 2020, she draws on the inspiration of her own home and garden to supply ideas for life-affirming colour, scent and texture, and to show how even the most unpromising outdoor space can be a source of sensuous renewal. Viewing the garden as an extension of the home, and with ideas for all seasons, this beautiful and inspiring book is illustrated with glorious photographs and enchanting paintings by the author herself. A book for dipping into or enjoying as one long read, or both.

Weeds are botanical thugs, but they have always been essential to our lives. They were the first crops and medicines and they inspired Velcro. They adorn weddings and foliate the most derelict urban sites. With the verve and historical breadth of Michael Pollan, acclaimed nature writer Richard Mabey delivers a provocative defense of the plants we love to hate.

'Wonderfully intense and honest - a poignant manual of how to grow hope against the odds.' Chris Packham, TV presenter and author of Fingers in the Sparkle Jar Finding herself in a new home in Brighton, Kate Bradbury sets about transforming her decked, barren backyard into a beautiful wildlife garden. She documents the unbuttoning of the earth and the rebirth of the garden, the rewilding of a tiny urban space. On her own she unscrews, saws and hammers the decking away, she clears the builders' rubble and rubbish beneath it, and she digs and enriches the soil, gradually planting it up with plants she knows will attract wildlife. She erects bird boxes and bee hotels, hangs feeders and grows nectar- and pollen-rich plants, and slowly brings life back to the garden. But while she's doing this Kate's neighbours continue to pave and deck their gardens locking them away, the wildlife she tries to save is further threatened, and she feels she's fighting an uphill battle. Is there any point in gardening for wildlife when everyone else is drowning the land in poison and cement? Sadly, events take Kate away from her garden, and she finds herself back home in Birmingham where she grew up, travelling the roads she used to race down on her bike in the eighties, thinking of the gardens and wildlife she loved, witnessing more land lost beneath paving stones. If the dead could return, what would they say about the land we have taken, the ancient routes we have carved up, the wildlife we have lost?

The growing group of bird enthusiasts who enjoy feeding and watching their feathered friends will learn how they can expand their activity and help address the pressing issue of habitat loss with 100 Plants to Feed the Birds. In-depth profiles offer planting and care guidance for 100 native plant species that provide food and shelter for birds throughout the year, from winter all the way through breeding and migrating periods. Readers will learn about plants they can add to their gardens and cultivate, such as early-season pussy willow and late-season asters, as well as wild plants to refrain from weeding out, like jewelweed and goldenrod. Others, including 29 tree species, may already be present in the landscape and readers will learn how these plants support the birds who feed and nest in them. Introductory text explains how to create a healthy year-round landscape for birds. Plant photographs and range maps provide needed visual guidance to selecting the right plants for any location in North America.

Gardens at the Frontier addresses broad issues of interest to architectural historians, environmental historians, garden writers, geographers, and other scholars. It uses different disciplinary perspectives to explore garden history's thematic, geographical, and methodological frontiers through a focus on gardens as sites of cultural contact. The contributors address the extent to which gardens inhibit or further cultural contact; the cultural translation of garden concepts, practices and plants from one place to another; the role of non-written sources in cultural transfer; and which disciplines study gardens and designed landscapes, and how and why their approaches vary. Chapters cover a range of designed landscapes and locations, periods and approaches: medieval Japanese roji (tea gardens); a seventeenth-century garden of southern China; post-war Australian 'natural gardens'; iconic twentieth-century American modernist gardens; 'international' willow-pattern design; geology and designed landscapes; gnomes; and landscape authorship of a public garden. Each chapter examines transfers of cultural ideas and their physical denouement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes.

Among the great joys of gardening, as this book demonstrates, are changing one's mind, striking out in new directions, and trying something new. In short, Lloyd encourages all gardeners to be adventurous and offers ways to make new and exciting such familiar chores as weeding, taking cuttings, reseeding, and pruning roots and branches. Both the neophyte and the experienced gardener will benefit from Lloyd's advice and inspiration.

Encourages the homeowner to conserve water by restoring natural processes that filter and return water to groundwater reservoirs. Learn the installation and maintenance of rain gardens. Provides garden plans and plant lists for different conditions and styles, including wildlife habitat, a pretty cottage border, and a formal garden. Discusses community gardens, ways that individuals can do their part in conservation, and provides many resources for further information. Rain gardens to suit any style or size of property are within the reach of anyone. Create a beautiful and enjoyable home garden while saving water and the natural environment.

The Country Housewife's Garden is precious to us for its attention to the role of women: as cooks, lovers of fine flowers, and keepers of the herbal medicine cupboard. While making many suggestions about the practice of gardening and growing fruit trees, Lawson is particularly interested in the layout and design of orchard and pleasure garden. There are several fine woodcuts of knot-gardens and various designs for flower beds. At the end of the two main works, there are two contemporary, short pamphlets on grafting and on picking, packing and transporting fruit. Malcolm Thick is an agricultural historian.

After decades of fantasizing and saving, of working multiple jobs and embracing frugality in the midst of Manhattan, Martha Leb Molnar and her husband had found their farm. Determined to turn an overgrown and unproductive Vermont apple orchard into a thriving and beautiful landscape, they decided to restore this patch of land to a pristine meadow and build a safe haven for their family and nearby wildlife.Once they cleared the gnarled and dying trees away, Molnar was forced to wage war on the invasive species that have sprung up around the property. Propelled by the heated debates surrounding non-native species and her own complicated family history and migration, she was driven to research the Vermont landscape, turning to scientific literature, experts in botany and environmental science, and locals who have long tended the land in search of answers. At turns funny, thoughtful, and conversational, Playing God in the Meadow follows this big city transplant as she learned to make peace with rural life and an evolving landscape that she cannot entirely control.