Gardening

In the eye of a bird or butterfly, the typical suburban landscape resembles an unfriendly desert. Closely mowed lawns, tightly clipped shrubs, raked-up borders, and deadheaded flowers mean no place to nest, no food to eat, and nowhere to hide. To the humans who live there, this means no bird songs, no colorful butterflies, no dazzling hummingbirds, no night-sparkling fireflies.

Creating a garden that welcomes these creatures may seem like a confusing and complicated task, but the principles involved are relatively simple. Essentially, wildlife needs food, water, and shelter, just like we do, and this lavishly illustrated guide shows which plants attract which creatures, and how to plant and care for them.

For anyone who's ever dreamed of growing their own food but isn't sure where to start, Do Grow delivers simple-to-follow guidance on planting and harvesting ten vegetables--whether it's in a small window box or a spacious backyard--and provides delicious, easyto- prepare recipes so readers can enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Plant the garden of your dreams and transform your outdoor space with award-winning Royal Horticultural Society garden design experts.

Whether you're looking to revive a tired flowerbed or simply looking for new garden ideas, the Encyclopedia of Landscape Design will show you how to make your ideal garden a reality. Even if you're new to gardening, you can grasp the fundamentals of garden design, find a style that suits you, and bring your ideas to life.

This design bible is packed with advice to guide you from planning to planting. From preparation such as choosing the correct materials for your structures and assessing your drainage, to laying patios, making ponds, and planting perennials, this book is with you every step of the way.

Discover inspirational portfolios including modernist, sustainable, Japanese, urban, family, and cottage gardens. Understand the unique features of each garden style, create your own plan, and marvel at case studies showcasing the gold standard of each garden type. With a handy visual dictionary and coverage of all the latest gardening trends, this book combines style with substance to guide you as you plant your perfect outdoor space.

Your garden, just like your house, sometimes needs a makeover. The change can be as minor as replacing a shrub or as major as pulling everything up and starting from scratch. No matter the size of your space or the scope of the project, the sage advice in Garden Renovation will help you turn your yard into a paradise. Bobbie Schwartz draws on her years of experience as a garden designer to teach you how to evaluate your yard, determine what to keep and what to remove, and choose the right plants and design plan.

Have fun and save money with this stone-cold, simple guide for growing marijuana at home! How to Grow Marijuana is your quick-start, blunt, and practical handbook to planting, growing, and harvesting marijuana (both indoors and out). With expert advice from master gardener Murph Wolfson, clear step-by-step instructions, and helpful tips, your cannabis garden will grow in no time!

Taking you through each step of the gardening process, How to Grow Marijuana is the one-stop manual for starting and nurturing a healthy weed garden. From instructions for casual gardeners on where and how to plant to improving your yield to harvesting and curing your bounty, this book is the easiest guide to growing weed at home.

From blue- green to purple and pink, flower-shaped to squat and spiky or tall and fuzzy, the variety, versatility, and low-maintenance care of succulents makes them go-to plants for home gardeners. Here, succulent stylist Rachael Cohen shows that these traits also make succulents the ideal material for living art. Tiny, jewel-like succulents can be clipped and replanted in infinite combinations, and unlike cut flowers, they thrive in these arrangements. When planted in corks, they become charming living magnets; when placed in seashells, they are a delightful reminder of a day at the beach. Succulents can also grow nestled in moss, creating an opportunity for even more creativity: arrange them atop mini pumpkins or adorn a headband or a tiny wreath.

In addition to illustrated step-by-step instructions for more than a dozen crafts, Cohen explains which succulents are best for each project, how to clip and prepare rosettes and leaves, and what to do when the plants outgrow their art pieces. Lush photographs throughout capture the natural beauty of the plants and boundless range of possible creations.

Saving the planet one garden at a time.

Gardeners can play a significant role in helping to sustain native plant diversity and providing refuge for threatened species of insects and sanctuary for birds, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals.

On the perimeter of Israel's Jezreel Valley, with the Carmel mountains rising up in the west, Meir Shalev has a beloved garden, "neither neatly organized nor well kept," as he cheerfully explains. Often covered in mud and scrapes, Shalev cultivates both nomadic plants and "house dwellers," using his own quirky techniques. He extolls the virtues of the lemon tree, rescues a precious variety of purple snapdragon from the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, and does battle with a saboteur mole rat. He even gives us his superior private recipe for curing olives.

Informed by Shalev's literary sensibility, his sometime riotous humor, and his deep curiosity about the land, My Wild Garden abounds with appreciation for the joy of living, quite literally, on Earth. Our borrowed time on any particular patch of it is enhanced, the author reminds us, by our honest, respectful dealings with all manner of beings who inhabit it with us.

Even beginner gardeners can select plants to create a stunning garden as unique as the Buckeye State with expert help to ensure success!

Ohio Getting Started Garden Guide is a plant selection guide, perfect for when you're choosing plants and starting a garden in a climate that can be as challenging as it is beautiful. Choose the right plants and care for them properly with help from an expert. One of the area's most highly respected and experienced plantsman, Denny McKeown, shares his deep knowledge of the region, gardens and plants in a lively, upbeat style.

The author's top picks for plants that will thrive in (or in spite of) Ohio's heat, humidity, winter cold, soil, and other unique growing conditions guarantee success for the area gardeners and home landscapers. Plants are divided into easy-to-browse chapters, including Annuals, Bulbs, Groundcovers, Ornamental Grasses, Perennials, Shrubs, Trees, Lawns, and Vines. Each plant is highlighted in its respective chapter with a large full-color photograph and tips on how, when, and where to plant.

Ohio Getting Started Garden Guide doesn't stop at plant selection. Methods for preparing soil, watering, fertilizer application, and pest management are also covered in detail. Along with the "nitty-gritty" of tending your garden, Denny shares his inspiration for garden design, offers ways to incorporate your plants into the landscape, and names some favorite cultivars or species. His sound, practical advice is clothed in beautiful descriptions of each plant that will inspire you to get your hands dirty!

Easier and Cheaper to Set Up Than Raised Beds!

For homeowners young and old looking for the easiest and most affordable way to grow the most vegetables, the Raised Row method shared in this breakthrough book is the new go-to choice. In the past decade, raised bed gardening has been wildly popular, but it requires buying wood or another material to build the raised beds, which quickly becomes expensive and labor intense. A raised row garden uses just soil and mulch, such as shredded leaves, to create raised growing rows and walking rows. This method is more budget-friendly, natural and just as effective to control weeds and see an impressive harvest your first year. Jim and Mary Competti, founders of the blog Old World Garden Farms, are the leaders of this gardening revolution. They've perfected and streamlined their method over several years. They spend only a few minutes per day maintaining a large garden that provides their family with food for the whole year. In this book, they share their secrets so anyone can do it too.

Raised rows utilize straw mulch, compost and cover crops to enrich the soil you have and keep down weeds naturally. This way, no backbreaking overturning of the beds is required, as it is for traditional row gardening. Now, readers can work less and enjoy the fruits of their gardens more!

Topics include:
- Tips for Hassle-Free Roses
- How to Grow Perfect Tomatoes
- How to Start Seeds Indoors
- How to Extend the Growing Season
And more!

When the hail starts to fall, Atina Diffley doesn't compare it to golf balls. She's a farmer. It's "as big as a B-size potato." As her bombarded land turns white, she and her husband Martin huddle under a blanket and reminisce: the one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds; the eleven-inch rainfall ("that broccoli turned out gorgeous"); the hail disaster of 1977. The romance of farming washed away a long time ago, but the love? Never. In telling her story of working the land, coaxing good food from the fertile soil, Atina Diffley reminds us of an ultimate truth: we live in relationships--with the earth, plants and animals, families and communities.

A memoir of making these essential relationships work in the face of challenges as natural as weather and as unnatural as corporate politics, her book is a firsthand history of getting in at the "ground level" of organic farming. One of the first certified organic produce farms in the Midwest, the Diffleys' Gardens of Eagan helped to usher in a new kind of green revolution in the heart of America's farmland, supplying their roadside stand and a growing number of local food co-ops. This is a story of a world transformed--and reclaimed--one square acre at a time.

And yet, after surviving punishing storms and the devastating loss of fifth-generation Diffley family land to suburban development, the Diffleys faced the ultimate challenge: the threat of eminent domain for a crude oil pipeline proposed by one of the largest privately owned companies in the world, notorious polluters Koch Industries. As Atina Diffley tells her David-versus-Goliath tale, she gives readers everything from expert instruction in organic farming to an entrepreneur's manual on how to grow a business to a legal thriller about battling corporate arrogance to a love story about a single mother falling for a good, big-hearted man.