Growing the Midwest Garden


Book Description

Plant selection and garden style are deeply influenced by where we are gardening. To successfully grow a range of beautiful ornamental plants, every gardener has to know the specifics of the region’s climate, soil, and geography. Growing the Midwest Garden, by Edward Lyon, the director of Wisconsin’s Allen Centennial Gardens, offers an enthusiastic and comprehensive approach to ornamental gardening in the heartland. This guide features in-depth chapters on climate, soil, pests, and maintenance, along with plant profiles of the best perennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, and bulbs.




The Midwest Native Plant Primer


Book Description

Bring your garden to life—and life to your garden! Do you want a garden that makes a real difference? Choose plants native to our Midwest region. The rewards will benefit you, your yard, and the environment—from reducing maintenance tasks to attracting earth-friendly pollinators such as native birds, butterflies, and bees. Native plant expert Alan Branhagen makes adding these superstar plants easier than ever before, with proven advice that every home gardener can follow. This incomparable sourcebook includes 225 recommended native ferns, grasses, wildflowers, perennials, vines, shrubs, and trees. It’s everything you need to know to create a beautiful and beneficial garden. This must-have handbook is for gardeners in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.




Growing the Midwest Garden


Book Description

Plant selection and garden style are deeply influenced by where we are gardening. To successfully grow a range of beautiful ornamental plants, every gardener has to know the specifics of the region’s climate, soil, and geography. Growing the Midwest Garden, by Edward Lyon, the director of Wisconsin’s Allen Centennial Gardens, offers an enthusiastic and comprehensive approach to ornamental gardening in the heartland. This guide features in-depth chapters on climate, soil, pests, and maintenance, along with plant profiles of the best perennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, and bulbs.




Your Midwest Garden


Book Description

It’s a rare midwesterner who doesn’t grow something, whether potted plants on a porch, caged tomato vines, a blooming border, or a solitary rose. And it’s an even rarer midwestern gardener who isn’t sometimes flummoxed by extremes of weather, pesky insects and persistent diseases, or simple questions about what to plant where. For nearly four decades, Jan Riggenbach has given these gardeners answers, as well as a weekly dose of gentle humor and wise counsel, in her widely syndicated newspaper column, Midwest Gardening. Your Midwest Garden draws on these columns to offer readers in America’s heartland all the gardening information they want and need, along with plenty they might not even suspect they’re missing. Annuals and perennials, shrubs and vines, fruits and vegetables, wildflowers, bulbs, and herbs: As readable as it is useful, this book reviews the familiar, reconsiders old favorites, and introduces dozens of surprising and seldom-grown plants ideal for Midwest gardens and landscapes. Illustrated with color photos from the author’s garden, it provides tips on plant placement and care, starting seeds and making compost, matching specimens and sites, combating insects and diseases, simplifying garden chores, designing for winter beauty, and myriad other ways of enriching and enjoying your Midwest garden.




Midwestern Native Shrubs and Trees


Book Description

In this companion volume to the bestselling The Midwestern Native Garden: Native Alternatives to Nonnative Flowers and Plants, Charlotte Adelman and Bernard L. Schwartz offer another indispensible guide to replacing nonnative plants with native alternatives. This time, their subject is the native woody species that are the backbone of our gardens and landscapes. Among other ecological benefits, native shrubs and trees provide birds and butterflies with vital food and reproductive sites that nonnative species cannot offer. And they tend to be hardier and easier to maintain. The authors provide a comprehensive selection of native woody alternatives that, season by season, provide effects similar to those of nonnative shrubs and trees used for ornamental purposes and shade. These plants are suitable for all garden styles, provide blooms and fall color, and have the same cultivation requirements as their nonnative counterparts. Nature notes alert readers to the native species’ unique ecological roles. Unlike other gardening guides, Midwestern Native Shrubs and Trees goes beyond mere suggestion to provide gardeners with the tools they need to make informed, thoughtful choices. Knowing which native species to plant for desired effects empowers landscapers and gardeners to take on a greater role in protecting our midwestern environment.




The Midwestern Native Garden


Book Description

Midwestern gardeners and landscapers are becoming increasingly attracted to noninvasive regional native wildflowers and plants over popular nonnative species. The Midwestern Native Garden offers viable alternatives to both amateurs and professionals, whether they are considering adding a few native plants or intending to go native all the way. Native plants improve air and water quality, reduce use of pesticides, and provide vital food and reproductive sites to birds and butterflies, that nonnative plants cannot offer, helping bring back a healthy ecosystem. The authors provide a comprehensive selection of native alternatives that look similar or even identical to a range of nonnative ornamentals. These are native plants that are suitable for all garden styles, bloom during the same season, and have the same cultivation requirements as their nonnative counterparts. Plant entries are accompanied by nature notes setting out the specific birds and butterflies the native plants attract. The Midwestern Native Garden will be a welcome guide to gardeners whose styles range from formal to naturalistic but who want to create an authentic sense of place, with regional natives. The beauty, hardiness, and easy maintenance of native Midwestern plants will soon make them the new favorites.




Midwest Gardener's Handbook


Book Description




Midwest Gardener's Handbook, 2nd Edition


Book Description

In this revised and updated 2nd edition of Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, gardeners in the north central US are handed all the know-how they’ll need to grow a lush, productive garden. If you live in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, or South Dakota, the environmentally sound growing info for both edible and ornamental plants found here is your green thumb map to success: Profiles of more than 250 plants proven to thrive in the Midwest’s climate, including shrubs, perennials, annuals, vegetables, fruits, herbs, vines, and more, help you select the best plants to create a beautiful landscape or a high-yielding edible garden. Helpful information highlights sun and shade requirements and offers clear and concise plant variety information. Month-by-month care and cultivation guides are offered for each plant group, guiding your journey—even if you’re a first-time Midwestern gardener. Author Melinda Myers addresses the many challenges of growing in the Midwest, including a changing climate and unique soil and pest troubles. The how-to methods for planting, pruning, watering, fertilizing, and much more are rich with information essential to those in the region. This comprehensive and extensive guide is the best resource for growing in the Midwestern states. Whether you live in Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland, Des Moines, or somewhere in between, Midwest Gardener’s Handbook has you covered. Midwest Gardener’s Handbook is part of the Gardener’s Handbook series from Cool Springs Press. Other books in the series include Florida Gardener’s Handbook, Mid-Atlantic Gardener’s Handbook, Northwest Gardener’s Handbook, and many others.




Herb Gardening for the Midwest


Book Description

Herbs add fragrance, beauty and practicality to your garden -- and it's easy to grow a wide variety of them just about anywhere here in the Midwest. This book, written by Laura Peters and coauthored by veteran Ohio garden writer Debra Knapke, offers handy tips and advice on: growing, maintaining and harvesting 360 of the best herbs for local gardens; propagation and winter care; solutions to common garden problems. This practical book will help you participate in the age-old tradition of using herbs to flavor foods, add seductive scents to potpourris and perfumes, and impart healthful, healing qualities to lotions and lip balms: * Exotic herbs such as kaffir lime, lemongrass, jasmine, fenugreek and stevia can be grown easily here. * Edible flowers such as nasturtiums and calendula can add flavor and interest to salads, teas, honeys and butters. * Fragrant herbs such as basil, rosemary and sage can be used in infusions, herbal baths and soaps.