Gary's Garden


Book Description

Gary's Garden is a hilariously bizarre comic that's sure to get you laughing out loud with its goofy characters and silly situations! Delve deep into the undergrowth and meet the crazy critters in Gary's backyard. It's full of the silliest creatures you'll ever meet. The worms think they're caterpillars, the caterpillars think they're acrobats, the spiders are conducting orchestras, the birds are raiding the house for snacks, and the squirrel's lost his nuts! And that's not even half of it! Join the fun in Gary's Garden.




Southern Gardening All Year Long


Book Description

Southern Gardening All Year Long approaches southern landscapes from a different perspective. Instead of encyclopedic lists and articles focused on botanical gardens or someone else’s landscape, author and host of Southern Gardening Gary R. Bachman connects with his audience through personal stories that share his expertise gained over decades of planting, all told in an easily digestible format. Most stories in Southern Gardening All Year Long focus on Bachman’s hands-on experience with gardening. He recounts tales about his own personal gardens—plants that have thrived and failed—and presents his advice in a common-sense style. Bachman's personal, conversational writing makes Southern Gardening All Year Long an old-fashioned, over-the-fence chat with a knowledgeable and helpful neighbor. Just as he has done in newspapers, and on television and radio, with Southern Gardening All Year Long, Bachman hopes to help gardeners be successful in their own landscapes, alleviate some of the apprehension new gardeners feel, and inspire experienced gardeners to try new plants instead of the same old plantings every year. Gardening success doesn’t always follow steps 1-2-3, but Bachman encourages readers not to worry about plants that don’t survive. Failures happen in gardens every season. Offering a variety of tips and tricks and over 170 color images, Southern Gardening All Year Long will become a gardener’s best friend.




Organic Gardening for Everyone


Book Description

If you want to grow healthy vegetables at home, but have hesitated because it seems too hard and time consuming, Organic Gardening for Everyone is your perfect hands-on guide—an “if I can do it, you can do it” case study that addresses your concerns and gets you started. Loaded with practical advice and step-by-step guidance, Organic Gardening for Everyone takes a very personal and friendly approach to a subject that can be intimidating. It is a first-class primer on organic vegetable gardening, and an inspirational story about how anyone can balance the rigors of gardening with the demands of a modern, family-oriented lifestyle. In 2012, a California mom decided to start an organic vegetable garden. But she went about it in an unusual way: she crowdsourced it by launching a YouTube channel under the name "CaliKim" and asking for help. And then she started planting. As questions came up, she turned to her viewers and subscribers and they replied with answers and advice. As she learned, her garden grew successfully—even in the hot, harsh California climate. Her expertise also grew, and now she answers many more questions than she asks and has become a very accomplished home gardener. And CaliKim has a great story to tell: growing healthy organic vegetables for your family is not difficult, even for today’s time-challenged lifestyles. She provides complete step-by-step information on growing the most popular edibles organically, and also gives sound advice on how to take on the challenges of balancing a hectic lifestyle with successful growing—and how to involve the whole family in the process. You'll be rewarded for your effort every time you place a plate of natural, organic vegetables on the family dinner table knowing exactly what they are, what is in them, and where they came from.




From Art to Landscape


Book Description

Garden designers face some daunting questions: How do I begin the creative process? Where can I find design inspiration? How will I know if my design is successful? If you approach these questions like an artist, with an artist’s tools and ways of looking at the world, you will be able to design gardens that combine the unique character of a place with your innermost creative spirit. You’ll make inspiring gardens that have real meaning, for yourself as well as others. In this luminous volume, landscape architect and artist W. Gary Smith explores the various means that artists use—including drawing, painting, sculpture, meditation, poetry, and dance—to create personal connections with the landscape that enrich and inform garden design. Part 1 focuses on simple techniques that anyone can use to nurture creativity, unleash the imagination, and get ideas down on paper. Part 2 shows how these techniques have shaped actual design projects—with spectacular results. Throughout, the author’s friendly and encouraging voice removes the shroud of mystery surrounding the creative process and shows how even the least artistically inclined can tap into inner resources they never knew they had. Smith’s own exuberant sketches and bold paintings illuminate the path from art to landscape. Infectiously engaging and unfailingly inspiring, this eye-opening book deserves to be read and reread by anyone who aspires to master the rich and demanding art of garden design.




The Complete Book of Ground Covers


Book Description

Ground covers are widely thought of as utilitarian—we turn to them when we have a problem that needs a solution. How fast will it fill an area? Can we put it into the tight spaces between pavers? How much foot traffic can it withstand? Yet these plants also offer a diverse range of beautiful and intriguing options with a variety of colors, textures, and forms. They can unify a landscape, knit together plantings and hardscape, and add extra layers of beauty, dynamism, and surprise. As a replacement for lawns, they can reduce our use of water, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, carbon-based fuels, and transform a yard into a diverse landscape of habitat and food for native insects, birds, and other wildlife. In this meticulously researched reference, nurseryman Gary Lewis profiles more than 4000 ground covers that can perform these roles with aplomb. No matter what kinds of conditions you’re facing—shade, dry soil, heavy clay, excess moisture—there’s a ground cover that will thrive and beautify your garden. Comprehensive, practical, and copiously illustrated, this indispensable volume belongs on the shelf of every designer, landscape architect, and serious gardener.




Plumbelly


Book Description

Set in the South Pacific, this debut novel is “a brilliant, discordant, and vulnerable picture of running away to sea and coming of age” (Matthew P. Murphy, editor, WoodenBoat magazine). It’s been two years since fifteen-year-old Gabe’s father uprooted his family and left the United States to sail around the world. The wanderlust ended in the islands of Ma’atea, where Gabe feels every bit the outsider. Until he meets two other palagis: a headstrong boy named Lloyd and the beguiling Tanya. Together they form an unbreakable bond—out of love, boredom, and the need for self-discovery. Gabe’s restlessness leads to quiet rebellions at first, full of flirtations with a burgeoning sexuality. But when he fears being suspected of a serious crime, he and his friends decide to flee Tongu Tongu. Their escape is Plumbelly, a twenty-nine-foot sloop that will be their refuge as they make their way toward the groundswells of the Pacific, to be carried into perils worse than they ever imagined.




Celia Planted a Garden


Book Description

From an all-star team comes a lyrical picture-book biography about a writer and master gardener who created beauty in a harsh island habitat that was visited by literary and artistic luminaries of her time. Celia Thaxter grew up on a desolate island off the coast of Maine, where her father worked as lighthouse keeper. Amid the white and gray of the sea, the rocks, and even the birds, young Celia found color where she could: green mosses and purple starfish and pink morning glories by the shore. And she planted her first garden, tucking bright marigolds between rocky ledges. When she was twelve, Celia’s family moved to nearby Appledore Island, where her father built a large hotel, and Celia planted a bigger, ever-growing garden with nearly sixty types of flowers, from asters to wisteria. Guests flocked to the hotel from around the world, among them such writers as Longfellow, Whittier, and Hawthorne. Celia had been writing poems about the island, her garden, and the sea, and they would be printed in magazines and books, making her a foremother of writing about nature. Now, for the first time, Celia Planted a Garden showcases her life and work, in a poetic, vividly imagined picture book from a team of two authors and an illustrator, each recipients of numerous awards. More about Celia Thaxter, including a rich time line and bibliography, awaits readers in the back matter.




Beatrix Farrand's Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks


Book Description

The Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks was prepared as a resource for those charged with maintenance of the gardens following their acquisition by Harvard University in 1941. Beatrix Farrand here explains the reasoning behind her plan for each of the gardens and stipulates how each should be cared for in order that its basic character remain intact. Her resourceful suggestions for alternative plantings, her rigorous strictures concerning pruning and replacement, her exposition of the overall concept that underlies each detail, and the plant lists that accompany her discussion of each garden make this a volume of interest to every student, practitioner, and lover of landscape design.




Practical Residual Stress Measurement Methods


Book Description

An introductory and intermediate level handbook written in pragmatic style to explain residual stresses and to provide straightforward guidance about practical measurement methods. Residual stresses play major roles in engineering structures, with highly beneficial effects when designed well, and catastrophic effects when ignored. With ever-increasing concern for product performance and reliability, there is an urgent need for a renewed assessment of traditional and modern measurement techniques. Success critically depends on being able to make the most practical and effective choice of measurement method for a given application. Practical Residual Stress Measurement Methods provides the reader with the information needed to understand key residual stress concepts and to make informed technical decisions about optimal choice of measurement technique. Each chapter, written by invited specialists, follows a focused and pragmatic format, with subsections describing the measurement principle, residual stress evaluation, practical measurement procedures, example applications, references and further reading. The chapter authors represent both international academia and industry. Each of them brings to their writing substantial hands-on experience and expertise in their chosen field. Fully illustrated throughout, the book provides a much-needed practical approach to residual stress measurements. The material presented is essential reading for industrial practitioners, academic researchers and interested students. Key features: • Presents an overview of the principal residual stress measurement methods, both destructive and non-destructive, with coverage of new techniques and modern enhancements of established techniques • Includes stand-alone chapters, each with its own figures, tables and list of references, and written by an invited team of international specialists




Agaves, Yuccas, and Related Plants


Book Description

Architectural and striking, these drought-tolerant plants provide excellent contrast to flowering perennial plantings. All the necessary tips to achieve success can be found in this helpful and expert text.