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Books > Gardening > Specialized gardening methods
There is something uplifting about having butterflies in your
flowerbeds, frogs in your water feature and birds in your bushes,
and knowing they're there because of you. Rich in detail and
accessible in style, Gardening for Wildlife is the crucial
companion to novices and expert gardeners alike. Adrian Thomas
dispels myths and offers new insights and ideas, helping everyone
understand what to do so gardens, large or small, can become ideal
homes for wildlife. Building on the success of the award-winning
first edition, this expanded and updated edition reflects the
latest research and developments in nature-friendly gardening. The
book serves as an expert guide to the practical aspects of this
rewarding pastime and educates readers about the ecological
principles involved, while exploding commonly held misconceptions
that often deter people from pursuing a kinder approach to
gardening. Adrian Thomas provides a detailed guide to the many and
varied species that can contribute to a natural and healthy garden.
Practical sections help you create entire habitats, such as
woodland and meadow gardens, in your garden. And the massively
expanded catalogue of the top 500 best garden flowers, shrubs and
trees for wildlife, now includes colour photos of every species. If
you love wildlife and want to encourage more to visit your garden,
this inspirational book will help you sow the seeds and reap the
rewards.
Grow your own beautiful multilayered food forest in your own
backyard. Pippa Chapman is an RHS trained gardener who designs,
plants and maintains abundant, biodiverse, edible and beautiful
forest gardens. Here she shares her practical tips for
realistically transforming your own plot, whatever its size, and
with limited time, money and resources. A forest garden doesn't
have to be big; you can grow a productive edible paradise in pots
and containers too. Pippa explains how to create multiple layers on
a small-scale to maximise your growing area, using polycultures and
guilds for healthy, low-maintenance food. She shares how to use
perennials for structure and for year-round food, and how to
incorporate flowers for beauty, wildlife and for the kitchen.
Chapters on permaculture design and forest gardening give practical
advice on how to plan and plant your own garden, with guilds and
plant profiles to give real-life examples to help you get started.
Useful tips on propagation and seed saving help keep plant costs
low and a handy chapter on the soil-food web will help you
understand your own soil and how to keep it healthy.
A wildlife-friendly garden provides year round entertainment whilst
providing food, drink and shelter for a range of species. This
volume gives clear and practical advice on how to create a wildlife
haven in your back garden and how to enjoy it through the changing
seasons.
Add a touch of green to your office, bookshelf, coffee table or
dorm room with these adorable mini ecosystems! A Beginner's Guide
to Terrariums shows you how to create your own glass container
gardens with easy-to-understand instructions and over 230 inspiring
lifestyle photos. With this guide you'll learn all the basics,
including how to: Decorate using a variety of plants Combine
plants, rocks and other objects to achieve just the right look
Choose the right container for your plants Care for a variety of
plants, including low-maintenance ones like succulents, air plants
and mosses This book includes 52 projects that teach you how to
create a wide variety of terrariums--from open-air containers, like
bowls, to jars and hanging decorations. No matter how you choose to
display them, terrariums are a whimsical, easy and inexpensive
addition to your home.
This is an exciting introduction to the global seed-swapping and
grassroots gardening movement, exploring how we can rewild the
world around us with beautiful wildflowers. As seedbombing and seed
swapping become even more popular, passionate seed activist Josie
Jeffrey presents an invaluable handbook to the practices,
explaining how we can fill the world around us with beautiful
wildflower blooms, as well as why we should care about our plant
heritage. With an invaluable directory of all the best common seeds
to save and swap, alongside essential seedbomb recipes to transform
concrete oases into colourful wildlife havens, this timely handbook
provides all the tools you need to start your very own green
revolution. Endorsed by Kew, the Soil Association, Seedy Sunday UK,
Dr Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar and The Heritage Seed Library, these
practices will transform any space into a riot of colour, and at
the same time help enrich the environment around where they are
growing. With essential husbandry and harvesting techniques and a
step-by-step guide to creating your own seedbank, this is an
empowering call-to-action every environmentalist or gardener will
dig into.
How clever would it be to grow all the ingredients for an entire
tasty dish in one garden pot? Well now you can, with The One-Pot
Gourmet Gardener, which takes 25 contemporary and classic recipes
and shows how to grow their ingredients in one chic container. Grow
each recipe in one pot and serve them in another! The container
recipes are arranged by eating event from picnics to snacks to main
courses and puddings, with drinks and dressings to accompany. Enjoy
refreshing chilled Gazpacho, followed by tasty Courgette and Fennel
Tart with healthy Micro-Veg Salad, topped off with delicious Summer
Pudding, and washed down with Pimms Jelly. The one-pot recipes are
for beginners and more experienced gardeners and cooks, and include
a full step by step masterclass to sowing, growing and harvesting.
Jason Ingram won Photographer of the Year at the Garden Media Guild
Awards, 2014
The healthier your plants, the happier you'll feel! A Beginner's
Guide to House Plants teaches you how to bring your indoor spaces
alive with lovely and easy-to-maintain plants -- and how to keep
them healthy. It provides detailed instructions on how you can
unleash the power of plants to energize and relax you, and how to
promote well-being by greening your environment. In this book
you'll find hundreds of useful tips, including: How to select the
right plants for your spaces and lifestyle Practical advice on
purchasing, potting and styling your plants How to care for many
different types of plants--from succulents and ferns to exotics A
mini field guide to over 60 popular plants you should know about
And so much more! Cultivating house plants can be both creative and
fun! Plant expert Ryusuke Sakaino provides tips on how to use
colors, textures, patterns and shapes to create a lush living
space, with one plant or many. His gorgeous photos will inspire you
to add greenery to every room in your home and office. No longer
just a pandemic hobby, plants deserve to be a permanent part of
your lifestyle!
Landscape designer Owen Wormser explains how to replace the
deadscape we call lawn with low-maintenance, eco-friendly meadows.
In this second edition of his award-winning book, he includes
photos of meadows in progress plus more ways to cultivate your own
organic meadow. This how-to book on growing your own wildflowers
and native grasses is also about sustainability, regeneration, and
beauty. In a world where lawns have wreaked havoc on our natural
ecosystems, meadows offer a compelling solution. It is garden
landscaping that is beautiful, all year round. Meadows establish
wildlife and pollinator habitats, are low-maintenance and low-cost,
have a built-in resilience that helps them weather climate
extremes, and can draw down and store far more carbon dioxide than
any manicured lawn. Wormser describes how to plant an organic
meadow garden or traditional meadow, that's right for your site.
His book includes guidance on: Preparing your site Designing your
meadow Planting without using synthetic chemicals Growing 21
starter native grasses and wildflowers, including butterfly weed,
smooth blue aster, purple coneflower, wild bergamot, blue grama
grass, switchgrass, and many more Building support in neighborhoods
where a tidy lawn is the standard. He also shares 28 color photos
that highlight the multitude of ways you can cultivate your own
organic meadow. To illuminate the many joys of meadow-building,
Wormser draws on his own stories, including how growing up off the
grid in northern Maine, with no electricity or plumbing, prepared
him for his work.
The ideal, easy-to-use resource for growing healthy, resilient,
low-maintenance trees, shrubs, vines and other fruiting plants from
around the world - perfect for farmers, gardeners and landscapers
at every scale. Illustrated with more than 200 colour photographs
and covering 50 productive edible crops - from Arctic kiwi to
jujebe, medlar to heartnut - this is the go-to guide for growers
interested in creating diversity in their growing spaces.
Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts is a one-stop compendium of the most
productive, edible fruit-and nut-bearing crops that push the
boundaries of what can survive winters in cold-temperate growing
regions. While most nurseries and guidebooks feature plants that
are riddled with pest problems (such as apples and peaches),
veteran growers and founders of the Hortus Arboretum and Botanical
Gardens, Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano, focus on both common and
unfamiliar fruits that have few, if any, pest or disease problems
and an overall higher level of resilience. Inside Cold-Hardy Fruits
and Nuts you'll find: Taste profiles for all fifty hardy fruits and
nuts, with notes on harvesting and uses Plant descriptions and
natural histories Recommended cultivars, both new and classic
Propagation methods for increasing plants Nut profiles including
almonds, chestnuts, walnuts and pecans Fertilisation needs and
soil/site requirements And much more! With beautiful and
instructive colour photographs throughout, the book is also full of
concise, clearly written botanical and cultural information based
on the authors' years of growing experience. The fifty fruits and
nuts featured provide a nice balance of the familiar and the
exotic: from almonds and pecans to more unexpected fruits like
maypop and Himalayan chocolate berry. Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts
gives adventurous gardeners all they need to get growing. Both
experienced and novice gardeners who are interested in creating a
sustainable landscape with a greater diversity of plant life -
while also providing healthy foods - will find this book an
invaluable resource.
Steven and Susan show how to create a range of useful structures
and furnishings, both large and small, at relatively little expense
by using mostly recycled materials. The first chapters show the
kinds of materials used and their possible uses; the next
demonstrate some basic making skills. The book then showcases a
variety of projects, including structures like a garden shed/studio
and a recycled deck, as well as smaller items of garden furniture,
such as garden chairs and tables, as well as various forms of
storage. Each project includes step-by- step construction
techniques with illustrations.
The story of how Francis Pryor created a haven for people, plants
and wildlife in a remote corner of the fens. A Fenland Garden is
the story of the creation of a garden in a complex and fragile
English landscape - the Fens of southern Lincolnshire - by a writer
who has a very particular relationship with landscape and the soil,
thanks to his distinguished career as an archaeologist and
discoverer of some of England's earliest field systems. It
describes the imagining, planning and building of a garden in an
unfamiliar and sometimes hostile place, and the challenges,
setbacks and joys these processes entail. This is a narrative of
the making of a garden, but it is also about reclaiming a patch of
ground for nature and wildlife - of repairing the damage done to a
small slice of Fenland landscape by decades of intensive farming. A
Fenland Garden is informed by the empirical wisdom of a practising
gardener (and archaeologist) and by his deep understanding of the
soil, landscape and weather of the region; Francis's account of the
development of the garden is counterpointed by fascinating nuggets
of Fenland lore and history, as well as by vignettes of the
plantsman's trials and tribulations as he works an exceptionally
demanding plot of land. Above all, this is the story of bringing
something beautiful into being; of embedding a garden in the local
landscape; and thereby of deepening and broadening the idea of
home.
A journal with a perpetual diary, a manual of gardening to inform
and inspire, packed with illustrations and an introduction by
Darina Allen of Ballymaloe Cookery School Three quarters Charles's
advice on how to grow great crops, one quarter writing space for
each day. Use it year after year to make the best decisions, with
your notes alongside Charles's suggestions, for future reference.
Advice in the diary section is linked to each week of the season
and takes you through the whole process, from clearing weeds,
feeding soil and sowing to harvests and storing vegetables. *
Advice on sowing and planting methods, plus raising plants at home
* Best sowing dates - seeds neither fail in cold nor start too late
* Advantages of no dig, saving time, giving fewer weeds and bigger
crops * How to maintain control of weeds through timely mulching
and hoeing * How to feed soil just once a year, for strong and
healthy growth * When and how to make all the harvests, with advice
on storing produce too.
Beans are easy to grow, easy to cook, delicious, nourishing and
beneficial for us and the planet. Growing your own beans not only
helps you build healthy soil in your garden, it also provides you
with a nutrient-rich diet. Beans can play a role in reducing the
risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer - they are good
sources of protein, fibre, folate, iron and potassium - and they
can reduce your carbon footprint and food miles as well! This
fascinating book brings together Susan Young's 10 years of
experimentation with multiple varieties of beans. She clearly
explains how to sow, grow, harvest, dry, store and cook them, and
shares her six 'must grow' varieties. Go on a tasty culinary
journey around the world and discover a range of colourful and
historic beans, from the pink 'Fagiolo di Lamon' of Italy to the
black and white 'Bosnian Pole' bean. Learn which varieties are best
for eating fresh from the pod and those that are best for drying
and storing for later use. Beans offer year-round nutritious meals,
and dried beans can be the star of the show with their fabulous
diversity of flavours, colours and textures.
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Veg Patch
(Hardcover)
Mark Diacono
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R529
R434
Discovery Miles 4 340
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Drawing directly from his experience as an acclaimed climate-change
gardener, and of setting up a kitchen garden from scratch for River
Cottage, Mark explains the practical aspects of organic growing,
introduces us to a whole world of vegetables we may not have
previously considered, and does away with alienating gardening
jargon once and for all. Mark begins with a catalogue of vegetables
that will grow in this country, explaining for each their benefits,
what varieties to go for, dos and don'ts, and popular culinary
uses. He then invites us to create a wish list of foods, and shows
us his own list from his early gardening days. Next, he explains
how to turn this wish list into a coherent kitchen garden plan
appropriate for our space, whether it be a patch of acidic soil, a
roof-top garden or an allotment, whether we put on our wellies in
every free moment or are 'time-poor' gardeners. Then he puts all
the theory into practice, showing us how to look after nutrients in
the soil, how to resist pests and diseases, and how to make our
garden sustainable and organic. In clear, concise sections we learn
about seed trays, supporting plants with climbing structures,
mulching, composting, companion planting, irrigation and promoting
pollination, and there are additional tables showing sowing and
harvesting times, plant sizes, and alternative varieties of plants
for different sites.About thirty recipes and a directory of useful
addresses finish the book, and the handbook is complemented by
bright colour photography throughout. Practical and inspiring, with
a textured hard cover and an introduction by Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall, "Veg Patch" is destined to join Handbooks
No. 1, 2 and 3 as an indispensible household reference.
This guide from the experts of Kew Royal Botanical Gardens is
filled with tips and advice to help you grow your best vegetable
garden ever! In this book Kew's Kitchen Gardener, Helena Dove,
combines practical elements with inspiration and beauty to make a
comprehensive and informative guide with all you need to know to
master theart of growing vegetables. She shows how to grow some of
the most popular staple crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, radishes
and rocket, and also some more unusual and exciting choices such as
oca, tomatillo, seakale and yacon. She gives easy to follow
instructions on how to be a successful vegetable gardener, plus 12
exciting projects to try throughout the year including forcing
rhubarb, creating an asparagus border and growing in raised beds.
From sowing, to planting young plants, to hardening off and
harvesting, find out what you need to do and when, to produce the
most magnificent harvests. All the advice is underpinned by the
expertise and authority of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and
illustrated from Kew's world-famous botanical collection. With this
book, you wil be able to reap a rich bounty of delicious vegetables
from just a few packets of seed and some fertile ground! This book
is from the Kew Experts series, in which the top gardeners and
botanical scientists from Royal Botanic Kew Gardens offer up advice
and information as well as suggesting handy projects on a range of
gardening topics. Other titles include: Companion to Medicinal
Plants, Guide to Growing Bulbs, Guide to Growing Fruit, Guide to
Growing Orchids, Guide to Growing Roses, Guide to Growing
Succulents and Cacti, Guide to Growing Trees, Guide to Growing
Herbs and Guide to Growing House Plants.
Learn which orchid plants to choose, how to obtain them, and how to
cultivate them, either in a greenhouse or in the home.
This book offers everything readers need to know to grow tasty
organic fruit outdoors - whether in a garden, allotment or on their
window ledge! It is suitable for beginners and includes a
comprehensive directory. This latest title, from a growing and
successful series, is by an UK author. What could be better than
the enjoyment of tasting your own sweet, succulent, home-grown
fruit? Most people have got room to grow some kind of fruit -
whether it be a small apple tree in a front garden, a grape vine up
a trellis or strawberries in a window box. Gardeners seeking a
concise, easy-to-follow approach to fruit growing and maintenance
need look no further; this book will provide all the practical
advice and information that they need. With guidance on which
fruits to choose, when and how to plant, propagate, harvest and
store them, plus a comprehensive directory of popular varieties to
grow - it won't be long before readers are discovering the delights
of their own home-grown organic fruit.
Grow-your-own food fans will be delighted to hear that it's
possible to have tasty, homegrown mushrooms to eat every month of
the year. This easy-to-follow, practical book explains how to grow
them in the garden, balcony, kitchen or cellar. Mushrooms are an
organic, sustainable and delicious form of plant nutrition and
fungi experts Magdalena Wurth and Herbert Wurth take you through
every step of the cultivation process. Learn how to grow 19
different mushroom helped along by clear tables, drawings and
photographs. Whether you start mushroom growing outdoors on tree
stumps and straw bales or indoors using compost or a kit, these
tried-and-tested methods make this the ultimate book on small-scale
mushroom growing.
Britain's gardens are a vast, living landscape and the home to
hundreds of species of birds. Learn to pay attention to these
visitors to your own garden or local park and you'll have a
front-row seat to the unfolding drama that is the garden bird's
year. As dawn breaks across your back garden, if you were paying
attention, you would notice that the robin and the blackbird are
always the first birds to arrive. These ground hunters have large
eyes, so don't mind the dim light of the early morning. And that's
just the beginning of what you can learn watching your own back
garden. Ornithologist Mike Toms has spent a year avidly observing
his own garden, and the result is a comprehensive picture of the
lives of garden birds. From the crowded yet quiet January garden
populated by migratory fieldfares and bramblings, to the riotous
gardens of spring, filled with songbirds competing for mates, the
garden ecosystem changes throughout the year. Learn to spot these
changes, to greet the arrival of the swifts in May and the new crop
of fledgling goldfinches and blackbirds in June, and you'll find a
new world opening up to you. A Garden Bird's Year is the perfect
introduction to this world. Supremely readable, it explains biology
and behaviour to paint a picture of the lives of common bird
species, while also offering practical information for watching and
feeding the birds in your own backyard. Toms details birds'
preferences for particular plants, seeds and feeders, so you can
learn to attract different species to your own garden. He also
charts fascinating recent adaptations - urban birds sleep later
than their rural counterparts, probably because cities are on
average a few degrees warmer, and they sing either earlier or
later, to avoid competing with local traffic; and the balance of
migratory birds to Britain is being affected by the world's
changing climate. Many species of garden birds are threatened, but
there is much that each one of us can do to support them, to
attract them, and to help them thrive through the year.
Widely acknowledged as the last great landscape designer of the
eighteenth century, Humphry Repton created work that survives as a
bridge between the picturesque theory of Capability Brown and the
pastoral philosophy of Frederick Law Olmsted. By turns inspired by
and in opposition to the grandeur of Brown s estates, Repton s
contribution to the British landscape encompassed a tremendous
range, from subtle adjustments that emphasised the natural features
of the countryside to deliberate interventions that challenged the
notion of the picturesque. This remarkable book explores 15 of
Repton s most celebrated landscapes from the early maturity of his
gardens at Courteenhall and Mulgrave Castle to more adventurous
landscapes at Stanage, Brightling, and Endsleigh that would point
the way toward how we envision parkland today. With photography by
Joe Cornish commissioned specially for the book, and including
reproductions of key illustrations and plans for garden design from
the famous red books that shed light on Repton s vision and
process, this book illuminates some of Britain s most beautiful
gardens and parks and the masterful mind behind their creation.
Conventional wisdom is difficult to question, even when it is
misguided and contains many contradictions. Gardening has its share
of such 'myths' - some with discernible origins in history, others
that have become established for no obvious reason - and they often
obscure simpler and easier methods of working. This delightfully
illustrated book reveals how common sense triumphs and crops are
more successful when these 'rules' are overturned. A fascinating
but practical book that will save the seasoned gardener time and
give new gardeners heart.
Dream Gardens explores twelve dream gardens in challenging spaces,
from tiny plots in the inner city, suburban blocks, sandy seaside
properties to expansive country acreages. Michael McCoy, well-known
garden designer and host of popular Australian TV series Dream
Gardens (in which the book's twelve gardens also feature) shows us
the challenges and the solutions for creating beautiful functional
gardens. By drawing on great garden design each garden finds the
perfect solution. In each challenging case, a beautiful garden is
created to meet their owners needs. Dream Gardens explores the
central ideas of garden design, and illustrates, with stunning
photography, how we can use design to make simple changes to our
gardens to enjoy beautiful and functional living spaces. The book
also features interviews with well-known garden designers,
including Fiona Brockhoff and Paul Bangay, discussing their
featured gardens.
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