This step-by-step guide will answer all of your questions about how to create beautiful gardens designed to welcome beneficial pollinators across the South. Combining up-to-date scientific information with artful design strategies, Danesha Seth Carley and Anne M. Spafford teach gardeners of all levels to plan, plant, and maintain successful pollinator gardens at home and in shared community sites. Everyday gardeners, along with farmers, scientists, and policy makers, share serious concerns about ongoing declines in pollinator populations, and here Spafford and Carley deliver great news: every thoughtfully designed garden, no matter how small, can play a huge role in providing the habitat, nourishment, and nesting places so needed by pollinators. This book explains all you need to be a pollinator champion. Covers USDA hardiness zones 6, 7, 8, and 9, including twelve southern states; Explains what makes pollinators happy-bees, for sure, and many others, great and small; Brings science and art together in gardens of all types, including urban, food, container, community, school, and large-scale gardens; Provides step-by-step instructions, from choosing locations, preparing soil and garden beds, selecting the best plants, designing, landscaping, and sustaining your garden through the seasons, and much more; Richly illustrated with photographs, design plans, and handy charts and lists.

Many gardeners today would like to create more wildlife-friendly gardens, but may feel restricted by their situation, or put off by assuming that they will have to make huge changes to an established plot. This practical book will scotch any myths about wildlife gardening, and encourage everyone, wherever they garden, to invite wildlife to share their outdoor spaces. There are practical ideas for gardens of all sizes and in varied situations, with a special chapter on wildlife gardening in towns: the smallest shady garden can support a range of wildlife and even a window-box or hanging basket in an urban apartment block can make a difference, if you ensure ingredients like extra food in winter, plants that sustain insects and bright or aromatic plants are planted to attract animals and keep them returning. From the best sites for ponds to the right plants to feed various fauna, this book should ensure both you and the wildlife enjoy your garden as fully as possible.

"I think this book will quickly become an insightful gardening friend." -- Adam Frost, garden designer and TV presenter Discover what to do at just the right time to create a garden that's full of life and colour all year round in this invaluable book, now shortlisted for the GMG PRACTICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR award. What to Sow, Grow and Do is a season-by-season guide that brings together projects, advice, task lists and ideas to help you plan your time in the garden, inspire your planting and nurture a deeper relationship with nature. Tracking a year in the garden, it guides you in what to do through a series of how-to tasks and helpful checklists. It also celebrates each season, highlighting the plants to enjoy, the wildlife to spot and the changes you can notice in the garden and beyond. Seasonal jobs cover everything from pruning roses to planting summer bulbs, together with ideas on encouraging and supporting a garden that's full of beneficial insects and wildlife. Armed with this book, you can create a thriving, flourishing garden that's a joy to be in. Whether you are a seasoned horticulturalist or are just starting on your gardening adventure, this guide is an indispensable companion to your year in the garden.

Federal Twist is set on a ridge above the Delaware River in western New Jersey, USA. It is a naturalistic garden that has loose boundaries and integrates closely with the natural world that surrounds it. It has no utilitarian or leisure uses (no play areas, swimming pools or outdoor dining) and the site is not an obvious choice for a garden (heavy clay soil, poorly drained: quick death for any plants not ecologically suited to it). The physical garden, its plants and its features, is of course an appealing and pleasant place to be but Federal Twist's real charm and significance lie in its intangible aspects: its changing qualities and views, the moods and emotions it evokes, and its distinctive character and sense of place. Monty Don commented after his visit, "it made me rethink what a garden can be and do." This book charts the author's journey in making such a garden. How he made a conscious decision not to "improve the land", planted large, competitive plants into rough grass, experimented with seeding to develop sustainable plant communities. And how he worked with light to provoke certain moods and allowed the energy of the place, chance and randomness to have its say. Part experimental horticulturist and part philosopher, James Golden has written an important book for naturalistic and ecological gardeners and anyone interested in exploring the relationship between gardens, nature and ourselves.