Late Summer Flowers


Book Description

While gardeners may be happy enough with their gardens in spring and early summer, few feel so confident about prolonging the display. In Late Summer Flowers Marina Christopher, co-founder of the celebrated Green Farm Nursery, shows how, by choosing plants that have a late flowering season, or offer such bonuses as attractive foliage, seedheads or berries, you can get the best from the garden in late summer and autumn.




A Way to Garden


Book Description

“A Way to Garden prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she calls “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener.




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.




Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture and Form


Book Description

Breathe new life into your garden! Maybe your garden isn't what it once was. Or maybe it's stunning during the full bloom of summer, but falls apart the rest of the year. Maybe it's crowded, sparse, boring, disjointed...or it just doesn't resonate with you, and you have no idea why or what to do about it. Don't retreat indoors! In this friendly guide, acclaimed landscape designer and best-selling author Rebecca Sweet offers simple strategies for transforming established plots and empty spaces into the garden of your dreams--a place that soothes your soul and revives your spirits year-round. Start by identifying problems with your current plantings (such as clashing colors, lack of flow and "one-of-each-itis"), then learn how to inject new life using artful combinations of color, texture and form. At the back of the book, you'll find a thoughtfully curated selection of 78 plants perfect for creating key elements of harmony in your garden. You don't need to be a professional landscaper to put these concepts into play. With this book as your guide, turning blah spaces into breathtaking places becomes fun, easy and perennially rewarding! Overflowing with creative examples of how to... Wake up boring beds. Make a cramped garden feel bigger, or bring a sense of intimacy to an expansive area. Downplay eyesores. Create moods ranging from serene to stimulating. Add four-seasons interest. Decide which plants to keep, and which to pull. Thoughtfully integrate hardscaping, structures and accessories. Transform an ordinary garden into one that's memorable and meaningful!




The View from Federal Twist


Book Description

Federal Twist is set on a ridge above the Delaware River in western New Jersey. It is a naturalistic garden that has loose boundaries and integrates closely with the natural world that surrounds it. It has no utilitarian or leisure uses (no play areas, swimming pools, or outdoor dining) and the site is not an obvious choice for a garden (heavy clay soil, poorly drained: quick death for any plants not ecologically suited to it). The physical garden, its plants and its features, is of course an appealing and pleasant place to be but Federal Twist's real charm and significance lie in its intangible aspects: its changing qualities and views, the moods and emotions it evokes, and its distinctive character and sense of place. This book charts the author's journey in making such a garden. How he made a conscious decision not to "improve the land", planted large, competitive plants into rough grass, experimented with seeding to develop sustainable plant communities. And how he worked with light to provoke certain moods and allowed the energy of the place, chance, and randomness to have its say. Part experimental horticulturist and part philosopher, James Golden has written an important book for naturalistic and ecological gardeners and anyone interested in exploring the relationship between gardens, nature, and ourselves.




No Dig


Book Description

Work in partnership with nature to nurture your soil for healthy plants and bumper crops - without back-breaking effort! Have you ever wondered how to transform a weedy plot into a thriving vegetable garden? Well now you can! By following the simple steps set out in No Dig, in just a few short hours you can revolutionize your vegetable patch with plants already in the ground from day one! Charles Dowding is on a mission to teach that there is no need to dig over the soil, but by minimizing intervention you are actively boosting soil productivity. In fact, The less you dig, the more you preserve soil structure and nurture the fungal mycelium vital to the health of all plants. This is the essence of the No Dig system that Charles Dowding has perfected over a lifetime growing vegetables. So put your gardening gloves on and get ready to discover: - Guides and calendars of when to sow, grow, and harvest. - Inspiring information and first-hand guidance from the author - “Delve deeper” features look in-depth at the No Dig system and the facts and research that back it up. - The essential role of compost and how to make your own at home. - The importance of soil management, soil ecology, and soil health. Now one of the hottest topics in environmental science, this "wood-wide web" has informed Charles's practice for decades, and he's proven it isn't just trees that benefit - every gardener can harness the power of the wood-wide web. Featuring newly- commissioned step-by-step photography of all stages of growing vegetables and herbs, and all elements of No Dig growing, shot at Charles’s beautiful market garden in Somerset, you too will be able to grow more veg with less time and effort, and in harmony with nature - so join the No Dig revolution today! A must-have volume for followers of Charles Dowding who fervently believe in his approach to low input, high yield gardening, as well as gardeners who want to garden more lightly on the earth, with environmentally friendly techniques like organic and No Dig.




The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener


Book Description

Even in winter’s coldest months you can harvest fresh, delicious produce. Drawing on insights gained from years of growing vegetables in Nova Scotia, Niki Jabbour shares her simple techniques for gardening throughout the year. Learn how to select the best varieties for each season, the art of succession planting, and how to build inexpensive structures to protect your crops from the elements. No matter where you live, you’ll soon enjoy a thriving vegetable garden year-round.




Gardening with Grasses


Book Description

Includes a selected plant catalogue of annual grasses; perennial grasses, rushes and sedges; and bamboos.




Late Summer Ode


Book Description

Davis’s poems are empowering and vulnerable, honest and embodied. In Late Summer Ode, Olena Kalytiak Davis writes from a heightened state of ambivalence, perched between past and present tensions. With Chekovian humor and metered pathos, from a garden in Anchorage not pining for Brooklyn, these poems “self -protest, -process, -recede.” Davis is a conductor of sound and meaning, precise to the syllable: a commanding talent in contemporary poetry.




Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces


Book Description

“Gardentopia is that rare marriage of the art of landscaping and the technical knowledge of how to compose a landscape—boiled down to readily understood and easily executed actions. This book puts you in the driver’s seat and shows you how to chart the course to your own personal garden utopia.” - Margie Grace, Grace Design Associates Any backyard has the potential to refresh and inspire if you know what to do. Jan Johnsen’s new book, Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces, will delight all garden lovers with over 130 lushly illustrated landscape design and planting suggestions. Ms. Johnsen is an admired designer and popular speaker whose hands-on approach to “co-creating with nature” will have you saying, “I can do that!’ This info-packed, sumptuous book offers individual tips for enhancing any size landscape using ‘real world’ solutions. The suggestions are grouped into five categories that include Garden Design and Artful Accents, Walls, Patios, and Steps and Plants and Planting, among others. Whether you are an experienced gardener or a landscaping novice, Gardentopia will inspire you with tips such as ‘Soften a Corner”, “Paint it Black”, and “Hide and Reveal”.