Spring, summer, autumn, and winter: wherever you are, the seasons come and go, bringing changes both welcome and unexpected. Japanese by birth, but transplanted to Europe in adulthood, Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. Why do primulas bloom in snow? Do the trees really 'talk' to one another? What are the blackbirds saying today? And is there a mindful way to deal with an aphid infestation? From rising early to walk barefoot on the grass each morning, to afternoons and evenings spent sipping tea in her gazebo or watching fireflies as she recalls her childhood in Japan, in Zen in the Garden Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation - and cultivation - of nature. She shows us that you can create Zen in your life, wherever you live and whatever form your outdoor space takes.

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** The Garden Jungle is a wonderful introduction to the hundreds of small creatures with whom we live cheek-by-jowl and of the myriad ways that we can encourage them to thrive. The Garden Jungle is about the wildlife that lives right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in the pavement, and in the soil beneath our feet. Wherever you are right now, the chances are that there are worms, woodlice, centipedes, flies, silverfish, wasps, beetles, mice, shrews and much, much more, quietly living within just a few paces of you. Dave Goulson gives us an insight into the fascinating and sometimes weird lives of these creatures, taking us burrowing into the compost heap, digging under the lawn and diving into the garden pond. He explains how our lives and ultimately the fate of humankind are inextricably intertwined with that of earwigs, bees, lacewings and hoverflies, unappreciated heroes of the natural world. The Garden Jungle is at times an immensely serious book, exploring the environmental harm inadvertently done by gardeners who buy intensively reared plants in disposable plastic pots, sprayed with pesticides and grown in peat cut from the ground. Goulson argues that gardens could become places where we can reconnect with nature and rediscover where food comes from. For anyone who has a garden, and cares about our planet, this book is essential reading.

Wave Hill, a world-renowned public garden in the Bronx, boasts a classic horticultural craftsmanship unrivaled among other public gardens in the United States. But it also embraces a design spirit that is daring and innovative. Every year brings changes to Wave Hill: new combinations of colours, textures, and forms, along with innovative themes and constant experimentation. A stroll through the garden has the power to thrill, stir, and uplift the soul. Nature into Art, lovingly written by Thomas Christopher, brings this splendid, sensory experience home by honoring the unsurpassed beauty of Wave Hill. Nature into Art explores the different areas of the garden - the flower garden, the shade border, the wild garden, the conservatory, and more - and gives home gardeners helpful information on the plants, techniques, and design choices that define this iconic space. Filled with stunning, ethereal photography by Ngoc Minh Ngo, Nature Into Art will enchant readers and inspire home gardeners everywhere to practice the Wave Hill way of gardening.

This text is an introduction to harmonic analysis on symmetric spaces, focusing on advanced topics such as higher rank spaces, positive definite matrix space and generalizations. It is intended for beginning graduate students in mathematics or researchers in physics or engineering. As with the introductory book entitled "Harmonic Analysis on Symmetric Spaces - Euclidean Space, the Sphere, and the Poincare Upper Half Plane, the style is informal with an emphasis on motivation, concrete examples, history, and applications. The symmetric spaces considered here are quotients X=G/K, where G is a non-compact real Lie group, such as the general linear group GL(n,P) of all n x n non-singular real matrices, and K=O(n), the maximal compact subgroup of orthogonal matrices. Other examples are Siegel's upper half "plane" and the quaternionic upper half "plane". In the case of the general linear group, one can identify X with the space Pn of n x n positive definite symmetric matrices. Many corrections and updates have been incorporated in this new edition. Updates include discussions of random matrix theory and quantum chaos, as well as recent research on modular forms and their corresponding L-functions in higher rank. Many applications have been added, such as the solution of the heat equation on Pn, the central limit theorem of Donald St. P. Richards for Pn, results on densest lattice packing of spheres in Euclidean space, and GL(n)-analogs of the Weyl law for eigenvalues of the Laplacian in plane domains. Topics featured throughout the text include inversion formulas for Fourier transforms, central limit theorems, fundamental domains in X for discrete groups (such as the modular group GL(n,Z) of n x n matrices with integer entries and determinant +/-1), connections with the problem of finding densest lattice packings of spheres in Euclidean space, automorphic forms, Hecke operators, L-functions, and the Selberg trace formula and its applications in spectral theory as well as number theory.

The 'Victoria Library for Gentlewomen', a series of books 'Under the Patronage of HM the Queen and HRH the Princess of Wales', edited by W. H. Davenport Adams (1828-91), provided information and advice on various topics for those who aspired to gentlewomanly status. Davenport Adams himself was a journalist and author of popular science and history works, but little is known of the two authors of this 1892 work. Edith L. Chamberlain was a minor novelist who had also published a book on the dialect of west Worcestershire, and Fanny Douglas worked with Davenport Adams on other titles in the series. This book follows the fashion of late nineteenth-century works (often by women) which combine descriptions of gardens and gardening with historical and literary references. It is unusual in that its final chapter describes ways for educated 'gentlewomen' to enter gardening as a profession - a radical suggestion for the period.

In House + Flower, Cynthia Zamaria immerses the reader in her creative process sharing how she infuses gardens, flowers and other elements of nature into sensitive home design. Through engaging photography and a welcoming narrative, this book inspires us to celebrate living environments as expressions of our personal style while also embracing a home's unique soul. With a passion for character-filled spaces, carefree floral displays, and an appreciation for vintage and artisanal objects, Cynthia's approach is timely, yet timeless. Readers are invited to see the potential in their own homes through the reimagined interiors and exteriors of the many Toronto-area residences she and her husband, Graham, have restored over the years. 'Here are houses found, embraced, personified and embodied by the spirit of the author. Cynthia gives the same generous passion to her homes as she does to her readers.' - Deborah Needleman, Author of The Perfectly Imperfect Home and co-author of the Domino Book of Decorating

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.

There is no shortage of books on how to look after houseplants but no one has shown us how and when and why these plants came to be in our homes. Catherine Horwood's combination of social history, plant history and the history of interior design explains why, as Flanders and Swann sung in the 1950s, 'the garden's full of furniture / and the house is full of plants.' In this fascinating book we learned how potted plants are as much subject to fashion as pieces of furniture. For the Victorians, it was the aspidistra in the front parlour, the Edwardians loved a palm, and, for today's millennials, no home is complete without the ubiquitous fiddle-leaf fig. This book show that there is little new when it comes to plants in the home. In the mid-18th century, Wedgwood created a market for special bulb pots and in the 1950s, some of Terence Conran's earliest designs were for houseplant containers. Across the ages, the choice of potted plants has been influenced by the layout of houses, the levels of dirt and pollution and the equipment to hand. Now, with so much choice, we seem happy to treat houseplants as disposables. This book gives a better understanding of the miracles that were once achieved with indoor plant displays, inspired by Sir Hugh Platt's 1608 vision of a garden 'within doores'. This new edition has been revised with new material added to bring the history of the houseplant and its massive explosion in popularity right up to date.

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.

Gardening on Clay provides valuable information and support for anyone struggling to create a garden from this challenging soil, which can so easily become waterlogged in winter and baked dry in summer. The author guides the reader through the basics of cultivation before going on to look at more detail at the plants that will flourish on clay soil.