This attractive, practical guide explains how to transform backyard gardens into living ecosystems that are not only enjoyable retreats for humans, but also thriving sanctuaries for wildlife. Beautifully illustrated with full-color photographs, this book provides easy-to-follow recommendations for providing food, cover, and water for birds, bees, butterflies, and other small animals. Emphasizing individual creativity over conventional design, Bauer asks us to consider the intricate relationships between plants and wildlife and our changing role as steward, rather than manipulator, of these relationships.
In an engaging narrative that endorses simple and inexpensive methods of wildlife habitat gardening, Nancy Bauer discusses practices such as recycling plant waste on site, using permeable pathways, growing regionally appropriate plants, and avoiding chemical fertilizers and insecticides. She suggests ways of attracting pollinators through planting choices and offers ideas for building water sources and shelters for wildlife. A plant resource guide, tips for propagating plants, seasonal plants for hummingbirds, and host plants for butterflies round out "The California Wildlife Habitat Garden," making it an indispensable primer for those about to embark on creating their own biologically diverse, environmentally friendly garden.

Learn how to keep your lawn in perfect condition all year round with this handy little guidebook from an experienced National Trust head gardener. It's packed with invaluable advice on all aspects of lawn design, creation and maintenance, whether you want an immaculate striped formal lawn or a more hardwearing surface for your children to play on, or even a romantic chamomile lawn or one strewn with colourful spring flowers. It includes incredibly useful troubleshooting tips for the typical problems your lawn might experience, including invasive weeds, pests and diseases and the effects of the weather. The author discusses which types of mower work best for different lawns, when and how to water and feed, and how to bring a neglected lawn back to life. He even dabbles in artificial turf and how best to use it, and offers creative ideas for decorative elements such as stepping stones, edgings and winding paths. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this practical guide contains everything you need to keep your lawn in tip-top condition, every day of the year.

Have you ever stared out your window at your back yard and dreamed of creating your very own Monet masterpiece? Have you ever looked out at your patch of grass and wondered where all those beautiful gardens in magazines come from? Have you ever given up and just closed your blinds? Then take this book home and get it dirty. It is an easy-to-follow guide to creating a garden that will be your unique masterpiece. Gardens that capture your eyes and heart don't come about by accident. Imagination as well as careful planning - before planting - intertwine in the process of designing inspiring gardens. Ruth Olde designs just this way. In "Landscaping Made Easy By Design", Ruth shares her planning methods and experiences in a delightful, readable way. You will view a multitude of garden designs that illustrate Ruth's basic premise - your garden is a space for living, made up of rooms. These outdoor rooms can be romantic, whimsical or formal, reflecting your personality.

Reconnect. Restore. Reciprocate. Repairing landscapes and reconnecting us to the wild plant communities around us. Integrating restoration practices, foraging, herbalism, rewilding, and permaculture, Wild Plant Culture is a comprehensive guide to the ecological restoration of native edible and medicinal plant communities in Eastern North America. Blending science, practice, and traditional knowledge, it makes bold connections that are actionable, innovative, and ecologically imperative for repairing both degraded landscapes and our broken cultural relationship with nature. Coverage includes: Understanding and engaging in mutually beneficial human-plant connections Techniques for observing the land's existing and potential plant communities Baseline monitoring, site preparation, seeding, planting, and maintaining restored areas Botanical fieldwork restoration stories and examples Detailed profiles of 209 native plants and their uses. Both a practical guide and an evocative read that will transport you deep into the natural landscape, Wild Plant Culture is an essential toolkit for gardeners, farmers, and ecological restoration practitioners, highlighting the important role humans play in tending and mending native plant communities.

The Royal Horticultural Society's definitive guide to propagating, nurturing, and designing with more than 200 cacti and succulents.

How can you encourage your bunny ear cactus to flower and flourish? What is the best method for propagating an echeveria or kalanchoe? What exactly are living stones, and where do they grow in the wild?

RHS Practical Cactus & Succulent Book is the ultimate reference book for cactus and succulent enthusiasts. An extensive illustrated plant directory profiles more than 200 succulent and cactus varieties, with instructions on how to grow each one.

Show off your plants with inspirational display ideas and step-by-step projects. Follow simple propagation steps to increase your cacti and succulent collection for free. Keep your plants healthy with advice and tips for care and cultivation.

Drawing on the unrivalled expertise of the Royal Horticultural Society, RHS Practical Cactus & Succulent Book is everything a cactus-lover needs.

The right kind of stone and how you incorporate it in your landscape and garden can make all the difference. Stone, a broad term that includes pavers, fieldstones, bricks, rocks and boulders, and stone veneer, can be used to create a distinct yet practical component to any yard. And with the variety of natural and manufactured stone products widely available today, incorporating stone in the landscape is no longer out of reach.
"Stonescaping Idea Book" showcases a wide range of inspiring and practical ideas for using stone in all types of landscape settings and for all budgets and regions of the country. Along with tried-and-true designs for inviting walkways and beautiful walls, new ways of using stone in gardens and patio spaces are also presented. You'll discover ideas for creating graceful streams, waterfalls, or even simple fountains that will help transform your backyard into a private retreat. And you'll find a wide range of outdoor living spaces that family and friends can enjoy for years to come. As the examples in the book demonstrate, there is a world of stone to explore; this book will help get you started on the right path.
Topics covered include:
Patios & Terraces
Paths, Walks & Steps
Walls
Pools & Ponds
Seating & Sculpture

Have you just joined the cactus craze? Do you want to know how to make your little bundle of spikes thrive, flower and breed? This quirky pocket-sized book is your essential guide to pleasing your prickly pet. Your cactus may be surviving, but is it happy? There's so much more to these little green plants than just keeping them alive. Happy Cactus gets right to the point with practical advice from potting to propagating. Unearth the secrets of different cacti and succulents, with profiles on more than 105 popular varieties - from the cute, flowering pincushion cactus to the wacky prickly pear, discover what makes your plant unique and how it might behave when treated with a little bit of love. Find out where to put it, when to water it, what to feed it, what to look out for and how to encourage its distinctive traits, from flower stalks to fast growth. Flick through inspirational features to help you create a show-stopping cactus display. Whether you're a young urbanite seeking a stylish houseplant for your flat but struggling to keep more temperamental plants alive, or a green-fingered cactus enthusiast determined to get your precious plant to grow and flower this year, Happy Cactus is here to answer all your questions.

Since the first edition was published in 1992, Nick Robinson's The Planting Design Handbook has been widely used as a definitive text on landscape architecture courses throughout the world. It remains one of the few titles written by a practicing landscape architect and educator who is also a horticulturalist and accomplished plantsman, and which deals with the application of planting design on a large scale in landscape architecture and urban design projects. The Planting Design Handbook is distinctive for its elegant integration of an ecological approach with an understanding of visual and spatial composition. It emphasizes the role of vegetation layers and designed plant communities in complex and diverse plant assemblages for all kinds of sites and uses. This expanded and comprehensively updated third edition still provides a complete examination of principles and practice of design for public, institutional and private landscapes. It takes account of developments in theory and practice, especially in the use of perennials, and reflects a variety of media and approaches current in landscape architecture and design. All chapters have been revised and re-written to ensure updated references and new references have been added. Many new photographs of planting and projects around the world have been included, with examples of current professional drawings to illustrate the design process. It is generously illustrated, including a colour section and the beautifully detailed line drawings of the Chinese architect and painter Jia-Hua Wu.

Compiled from the pages of "Fine Gardening" magazine, "Container Gardening" takes the reader by the hand and provides a tutorial on the three major aspects of container gardening: designing beautiful pots, combining plants that will thrive in any region of the country, and keeping the plants healthy and beautiful all season. The ideal option for renters, or those without the time and space for traditional gardening, container gardening is becoming increasingly popular. This thorough and comprehensive guide covers every conceivable nuance and even includes galleries of ideas for green-fingered inspiration. "Fine Gardening" magazine from The Taunton Press, combines breathtaking design ideas, helpful techniques and the know-how to get great results in your own garden.

Ultimate Gardens & Swimming Pools Front cover image Wim Pauwels Not yet printed due - 05/19 9782875500656 Hardback Beta-Plus Publishing Territory: World Size: 340 mm x 270 mm Pages: 192 Illustrations: 200 colour RRP GBP69.95 This book features some of the world's most beautiful private gardens and swimming pools, realised by the best garden and landscape architects working today. Includes private gardens from the UK, France, Belgium, and Hong Kong. Text in English and French.

A must-read for anyone who wants to know how to grow their own zero-food miles, pesticide-free veg, while treading gently upon our planet. Dave Goulson, author of The Garden Jungle and Gardening for Bumblebees Whether you're an experienced gardener or have ambitious plans for your allotment, this A-Z, soil-to-table guide shows you how to reduce chemical inputs; naturally enrich your growing ecology; and create a hardy, nutrient-dense and delicious crop. In The Healthy Vegetable Garden, expert organic gardener Sally Morgan explains how to use natural approaches to cope with the challenges of a changing climate through principles from regenerative gardening, agroecology and permaculture - all to help your green space thrive. The Healthy Vegetable Garden shows you how to: Combat disease and keep pests at bay with natural predators, companion planting and trap and barrier crops Choose the right plants to attract pollinators and pest predators Build a healthy soil full of organic matter, earthworms and mycorrhizal fungi Regenerate soil through no-dig practices, composting, cover crops and mulching Boost biodiversity through the use of crop rotations and polyculture Rewild your garden by creating a range of habitats, making use of walls and fences, log piles, water features and wild corners Understand plant defences and use biocontrols Make natural barriers, traps and lures A healthy, productive garden should work in harmony with nature to produce and protect delicious fruits and vegetables as well as build a rich soil that is full of life. With The Healthy Vegetable Garden, growers of all levels will start reducing incidents of pests and diseases while creating a verdant habitat - all without the need for fertilizers, pesticides or weedkillers.

Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin turn the compost bin upside down with their liberating system of keeping compost heaps right in the garden, rather than in some dark corner behind the garage. The compost and the plants live together from the beginning in a nourishing, organic environment. The authors' bountiful, compost-rich gardens require less digging, weeding, mulching, and even less planting. And here's one of the best parts -- no more backbreaking slogs from compost bin to garden. The authors even identify the plants that benefit most from compost and how the elements of a composted garden work together.
A natural Six-Way Compost Gardening System provides the ruling principles for successfully improving every garden with healthy compost. Readers will learn how to:
1. Choose labor-saving sites that keep gardens and compost piles as close to one another as possible.
2. Work with the compostable riches produced at home. Every yard and kitchen produces plenty of material -- easily identified with at-a-glance charts -- for a great start.
3. Help composting critters do their work by balancing ingredients, adding high-nitrogen meals when needed, and keeping the compost moist.
4. Reuse recycling bin items, such as large plastic buckets and cardboard boxes, as composting equipment.
5. Keep diversity in the mix. The magic is in the variety of the components and how they work together to create "gardener's gold."
6. Customize composting to suit specific garden needs, always concentrating first on soil care.
Adhering to these guidelines, Pleasant and Martin bring readers on a thorough, informative tour of materials and innovative techniques, leading the way to an efficient and rewarding home gardening system. Their methods are sure to help gardeners turn average vegetable plots into rich incubators of healthy produce, bursting with fresh flavor, and flower beds into rich tapestries of bountiful blooms all season long.

Already in his early forties and not entirely content with his lot, Keith Stewart traded life in New York's corporate grind for an upstate farm. Starting as a one-man operation, short on experience and with modest expectations, Stewart soon found that the agrarian life, despite its numerous challenges, suited him well. His new business flourished. Today, he has a crew of six to eight seasonal workers and grows about one hundred varieties of vegetables and herbs. What began as a yearning - 'to live on a piece of land, closer to nature; to work outside with my body as well as my brain; to leave behind the world of briefcases, computers, corporate clients, and non-opening windows' - has become a life 'more full, more varied,' often 'more demanding and exhausting,' but 'always more real.' Stewart sells everything he grows directly to consumers and restaurateurs, and in doing so has developed loyal and growing ranks devoted to his Rocambole garlic, varied herbs, heirloom tomatoes, and other organic produce. Now, in "It's a Long Road to a Tomato", Stewart presents interlocking, complementary essays, addressing his mid-life development as a farmer; some of the nuts and bolts and how-tos of organic vegetable growing and selling in an urban market; humourous and philosophical stories about domestic and wild farm animals; and insights into the political, social, and environmental issues surrounding agriculture today and why they matter to all of us.

Permaculture tends to be very much in the domain of home gardeners and property owners. But what if we could take it all a step further, and merge the fields of permaculture and market gardening? In The Permaculture Market Garden, author Zach Loeks brings together his passion for sustainable permaculture food production systems and beautiful, vibrant illustrations to provide a highly visual guide to the smooth integration of permaculture into the market garden, in ways that are scalable to specific situations. Profiling crops and ecosystem-based techniques, Loeks demonstrates a profitable, sustainable and approachable model for the future of market gardening. Along the way, Loeks introduces his own system of PermaBeds, season extension techniques, intensive and rotational interplanting, in-depth discussions on soil health, and more, bringing activities, designs and prospects of farming to life through illustrations, so the reader can be immersed within the world of permaculture farming. Playful, informative and curious, inspiring and beautiful and packed with accessible practical information, The Permaculture Market Garden will inspire both the seasoned market gardener as well as anyone aspiring to start a business. Zach Loeks is a market gardener, farm consultant and educator living in the Ottawa Valley. Winner of two regional awards for sustainability and innovation in agriculture, he shares his expertise in farming, design and business through a successful series of on-farm workshops, conferences and schools, as well as a successful year-round CSA.

Learn about the incredible range of useful shrubs for many different situations, large and small. World renown expert, Martin Crawford, includes common fruit bushes like currants and gooseberries, and many other less-known shrubs with edible fruits, nuts, leaves, or other parts. He takes us on a journey into the world of exotic spice trees, shrubs with medicinal parts, and plants that fix nitrogen to help fertilise other plants. All these can be grown in temperate climates, diversifying our diets, enabling us to design beautiful, productive gardens, as well as showing us how we can integrate agroforestry into our smallholdings and farms to create new income streams. Despite increasingly urgent calls from scientists, the not-fit-for-purpose economic and political systems we live in cannot be relied upon to implement the carbon emission reductions needed. This where we come into it: Whether we are farmer, gardener or plant dabbler, by planting shrubby plants that sequester carbon, we can minimise our carbon footprint and ideally live a carbon-negative life. On a broadscale, perennial and woody species are the way forward to reduce carbon emissions in agriculture. Woody crops sequester carbon in their biomass, but can also be grown in systems which allow for sequestration of large amounts of carbon into the soil.

Bonsai, the art of growing a tree in miniature, has fascinated and captured the imaginations of people worldwide for hundreds of years. This book will show you how to establish a collection, from first tree acquisitions to quickly creating your own bonsai from ordinary garden material. Step-by-step demonstrations, real examples and helpful advice then ensure you can develop and refine your trees in line with your aspirations. Key coverage includes: both indoor and outdoor bonsai; the best equipment and materials to use; the established bonsai styles and the different approaches required for various tree species; detailed advice on how to keep your tree strong and healthy; guidance on watering, positioning, feeding, pests and problems and an analysis of roots and the process of repotting. There are separate detailed chapters on trunks, branches and twigs with guidance on design considerations; practical styling techniques; bonsai aesthetics, including sources of inspiration, tree styling and pot choice, and finally, detailed case studies, spanning many years, documenting the development of a range of trees.

Hypertufa containers - also known as troughs - are rustic, striking, versatile, and perfect for small, Alpine plants. A mix of cement, perlite, peat, and water, they are simple and affordable to make at home. Hypertufa Containers details everything a home gardeners needs to know to make their own troughs and successfully garden in them. Readers will discover the amazing variety of plants that thrive in troughs. Plant portraits include growing and cultivation information along with potting tips. The book features step-by-step instructions for making hypertufa containers in a variety of shapes and sizes. The instructions are easy to follow and feature colour photography. Hypertufa Containers is for container gardeners, rock gardeners, and people looking for a new DIY project.

Discover everything you need to know to kick-start your composting journey! Dig into compost basics and get to grips with the many benefits of composting and the tools you'll need to get the job done. It's time to let your garden grow! You don't have to be a horticulture expert to get started, this indispensable compost gardening book for beginners will take you through every single step! It includes: - Gardening tips on how to make compost at home - Packed with practical, jargon-free advice, and simple DIY composting techniques - Easy-to-follow format to help grow your gardening knowledge Perfect for first-time gardeners, this is your no-fuss guide to composting! From making your own fertiliser for plants to building your own compost bin, this sustainable gardening book will help you give your vegetable and flower garden a boost. Gorgeous, full-colour photography provides plenty of inspiration to get you started! Expert tips and step-by-step instructions on every page help make sure that you care for your garden in the right way for them to flourish. Make your green-fingered dreams a reality with the Grow Series from DK. Learn how to brighten up even the trickiest areas in Grow Containers, or discover how to garden more sustainably in Grow Eco-Gardening. Alternatively, there are more titles to explore such as Grow Pruning & Training and Grow Houseplants.