Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast


Book Description

In this field guide to the future, esteemed Harvard University botanist Peter Del Tredici unveils the plants that will become even more dominant in urban environments under projected future environmental conditions. These plants are the most important and most common plants in cities. Learning what they are and the role they play, he writes, will help us all make cities more livable and enjoyable. With more than 1000 photos, readers can easily identify these powerful plants. Learn about the fascinating cultural history of each plant.




Apartment Gardening


Book Description

Forget the 100-mile eat-local diet; try the 300-square-foot-diet &— grow squash on the windowsill, flowers in the planter box, or corn in a parking strip. Apartment Gardening details how to start a garden in the heart of the city. From building a window box to planting seeds in jars on the counter, every space is plantable, and this book reveals that the DIY future is now by providing hands-on, accessible advice. Amy Pennington's friendly voice paired with Kate Bingham-Burt's crafty illustrations make greener living an accessible reality, even if readers have only a few hundred square feet and two windowsills. Save money by planting the same things available at the grocery store, and create an eccentric garden right in the heart of any living space.




The Urban Garden


Book Description

"101 creative and inspiring ideas to grow edible and decorative plants in urban environments"--




The Essential Urban Farmer


Book Description

The "how-to" guide for a new generation of farmers from the author of Farm City and a leading urban garden educator. In this indispensable guide, Farm City author Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal share their experience as successful urban farmers and provide practical blueprints-complete with rich visual material-for novice and experienced growers looking to bring the principles of ethical food to the city streets. The Essential Urban Farmer guides readers from day one to market day, advising on how to find the perfect site, design a landscape, and cultivate crops. For anyone who has ever grown herbs on windowsills, or tomatoes on fire escapes, this is an invaluable volume with the potential to change our menus, our health, and our cities forever.




The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food


Book Description

The first graphic novel guide to growing a successful raised bed vegetable garden, from planning, prepping, and planting, to troubleshooting, care, and harvesting. “A fun read packed with practical advice, it’s the perfect resource for new gardeners, guiding you through every step to plant, grow, and harvest a thriving and productive food garden.”—Joe Lamp’l, founder and creator of the Online Gardening Academy Like having your own personal gardening mentor at your side, The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food is the story of Mia, an eager young professional who wants to grow her own vegetables but doesn't know where to start, and George, her retired neighbor who loves gardening and walks her through each step of the process. Throughout the book, "cheat sheets" sum up George's key facts and techniques, providing a handy quick reference for anyone starting their first vegetable garden, including how to find the best location, which vegetables are easiest to grow, how to pick out the healthiest plants at the store, when (and when not) to water, how to protect your plants from pests, and what to do with extra produce if you grow too much. If you are a visual learner, beginning gardener, looking for something new, or have struggled to grow vegetables in the past, you'll find this unique illustrated format ideal because many gardening concepts--from proper planting techniques to building raised beds--are easier to grasp when presented visually, step by step. Easy and entertaining, The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food makes homegrown vegetables fun and achievable.




A Field Guide to Sprawl


Book Description

A visual lexicon of the colorful slang, from alligator investment to zoomburb, that defines sprawl in America. May well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl. --New York Times




Grow Bag Gardening


Book Description

Grow oodles of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers with no heavy lifting or digging required! Grow bag gardening utilizes lightweight, eco-friendly, fabric planter bags to grow great plants with minimal space and care. Get all the know-how you need to successfully grow a hearty homegrown harvest in Grow Bag Gardening. Grow bags are perfect for urban, container, rooftop, balcony, and patio gardeners—but those with lots of property will find them useful, too. Grow bags fold flat for easy storage and are 100% frost-proof, so there’s no lugging heavy pots indoors for the winter. They can be used for many seasons and their mobility means you can easily move these pots around to maximize sunlight. Fabric grow bags offer gardeners a great way to grow that's cost effective, simple, and beneficial to plants. In the pages of Grow Bag Gardening you’ll learn: Why gardening in these special fabric planter bags results in big yields How this no-weed, no-mess method of gardening is a real game changer What makes this method so good for your plants (hint: no root circling!) Where and how to set up your grow bag garden to reap the biggest rewards Step-by-step instructions for continual harvests, sewing your own grow bags, building a specialized trellising system, caring for your grow bag garden, and more. Who can use grow bag gardening? Everyone! From school gardens to urban homesteads, everyone has room to grow their own veggies in a grow bag garden. Kevin Espiritu, author of Field Guide to Urban Gardening and the mastermind behind the popular website EpicGardening.com, offers an in-depth look at this revolutionary gardening method and how it can help feed the world, one grow bag at a time.




A New Garden Ethic


Book Description

In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever: “An outstanding and deeply passionate book.” —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species? Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives—lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.




Networks of New York


Book Description

A guided tour of the physical Internet, as seen on, above, and below the city’s streets What does the Internet look like? It’s the single most essentail aspect of modern life, and yet, for many of us, the Internet looks like an open browser, or the black mirrors of our phones and computers. But in Networks of New York, Ingrid Burrington lifts our eyes from our screens to the streets, showing us that the Internet is everywhere around us, all the time—we just have to know where to look. Using New York as her point of reference and more than fifty color illustrations as her map, Burrington takes us on a tour of the urban network: She decodes spray-painted sidewalk markings, reveals the history behind cryptic manhole covers, shuffles us past subway cameras and giant carrier hotels, and peppers our journey with background stories about the NYPD's surveillance apparatus, twentieth-century telecommunication monopolies, high frequency trading on Wall Street, and the downtown building that houses the offices of both Google and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. From a rising star in the field of tech jounalism, Networks of New York is a smart, funny, and beautifully designed guide to the endlessly fascinating networks of urban Internet infrastructure. The Internet, Burrington shows us, is hiding in plain sight.




The Permaculture City


Book Description

Permaculture is more than just the latest buzzword; it offers positive solutions for many of the environmental and social challenges confronting us. And nowhere are those remedies more needed and desired than in our cities. The Permaculture City provides a new way of thinking about urban living, with practical examples for creating abundant food, energy security, close-knit communities, local and meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable policies in our cities and towns. The same nature-based approach that works so beautifully for growing food—connecting the pieces of the landscape together in harmonious ways—applies perfectly to many of our other needs. Toby Hemenway, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of permaculture design, illuminates a new way forward through examples of edge-pushing innovations, along with a deeply holistic conceptual framework for our cities, towns, and suburbs. The Permaculture City begins in the garden but takes what we have learned there and applies it to a much broader range of human experience; we’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures. Hemenway lays out how permaculture design can help towndwellers solve the challenges of meeting our needs for food, water, shelter, energy, community, and livelihood in sustainable, resilient ways. Readers will find new information on designing the urban home garden and strategies for gardening in community, rethinking our water and energy systems, learning the difference between a “job” and a “livelihood,” and the importance of placemaking and an empowered community. This important book documents the rise of a new sophistication, depth, and diversity in the approaches and thinking of permaculture designers and practitioners. Understanding nature can do more than improve how we grow, make, or consume things; it can also teach us how to cooperate, make decisions, and arrive at good solutions.




Recent Books