The Grumpy Gardener


Book Description

Definitive gardening advice - along with a story or two - for the novice or expert from one of the nation's most-trusted, and Grumpy, sources. Gardeners from across the country have turned to Southern Living Senior Garden Editor Steven Bender - known affectionately as "The Grumpy Gardener" - for his keen knowledge and gardening know-how with equal doses sarcasm and sidesplitting humor for nearly 35 years. Finally, the collected wit and wisdom of the magazine's most irreverent and beloved columnist can be found in a single A - Z volume, providing gardeners from coast-to-coast with his valuable tips for planting, troubleshooting, and growing flowers, vegetables, shrubs, trees and more, all delivered in his signature cantankerous style. Sidebars throughout the book - "Ask Grumpy" - help readers tackle common garden problems ("How do I get ride of little house ants?"), and readers from the past 35 years take part in the book when Grumpy shares his favorite reader's responses to some of his advice, his favorite rules for gardening, and Q & A's covering your favorite plants and flowers are all inside. Additionally, beautiful line-drawings and illustrations throughout make the book as beautiful to look at as well as entertaining to read. The Grumpy Gardener is sure to become the most trusted tool in your gardening shed!




Passalong Plants


Book Description

"Rushing and Bender are storytellers in the great Southern tradition, and expert gardeners, too. Best of all, they are wonderfully amusing companions for the trip on which they invite us: a tour of traditional Southern plants."--"Horticulture." 88 color photos. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.




Kitchen Garden Revival


Book Description

Elevate your backyard veggie patch into a work of sophisticated and stylish art. Kitchen Garden Revival guides you through every aspect of kitchen gardening, from design to harvesting—with expert advice from author Nicole Johnsey Burke, founder of Rooted Garden, one of the leading US culinary landscape companies, and Gardenary, an online kitchen gardening education and resource company. Participating in the grow-your-own movement is important to both reduce your food miles and control what makes it onto your family’s table. If you’ve hesitated to take part because installing and caring for a traditional vegetable garden doesn’t seem to suit your life or your sense of style, Kitchen Garden Revival is here to show you there’s a better, more beautiful way to grow food. Instead of row after row of cabbage and pepper plants plunked into a patch of dirt in the middle of the yard, kitchen gardens are attractive, highly tailored food gardens consisting of easy-to-maintain raised planting beds laid out in an organized geometric pattern. Offering both four seasons of ornamental interest and plenty of fresh, homegrown fruits, vegetables, and herbs, kitchen gardens are the way to grow your own food in a fashionable, modern, and practical way. Kitchen gardens were once popular features of the European and early American landscape, but they fell out of favor when our agrarian roots were displaced by industrialization. With this accessible and inspirational guide, Nicole aims to return the kitchen garden to its rightful place just outside of every backdoor. Learn the art of kitchen gardening as you discover: What characteristics all kitchen gardens have in common How to design and install gorgeous kitchen garden beds using metal, wood, or stone Why raised beds mean reduced maintenance What crops are best for your kitchen garden A planting, tending, and harvesting plan developed by a pro Season-by-season growing guides It's time to join the Kitchen Garden Revival and start growing your own delicious, organic food.




Southern Living Wedding Planner and Keepsake


Book Description

This go-to guide for the bride-to-be has everything she needs to make her big day memorable and special-checklists, schedules, guides, and, most of all, inspiration. Immediately after he pops the question, the planning begins full-speed ahead. Make it easy, memorable, and, most of all fun with the help of the Southern Living Wedding Planner and Keepsake. This beautiful, yet handy binder is the ultimate, comprehensive guide to planning the Southern wedding of your dreams. It covers every detail extensively-from the stationery to the flowers to the ceremony and reception. A lay-flat, concealed wire format and plenty of pockets make it easy to save and organize business cards, dress swatches, receipts and other essentials of wedding planning. Whether you're focused on staying within a tight budget, or if you want to splurge on the flowers, cake, reception, or the entire day, the Southern Living team has researched it and has a plan that will work for you. Of course, no wedding keepsake book would be complete without beautiful and inspirational photography, and Southern Living delivers like no other with over 100 full-color shots from real dream weddings across the South and over 200 images overall. Dozens of helpful ideas from our wedding experts help bring it all together with ease. Detailed plans and checklists from the experts at Southern Living make this book a must have to accomplish each activity before the big day.




Floret Farm's Discovering Dahlias


Book Description

A stunning guide to growing, harvesting, and arranging gorgeous dahlia blooms from celebrated farmer-florist and New York Times bestselling author Erin Benzakein, founder of Floret Flower Farm. World-renowned flower farmer and floral designer Erin Benzakein reveals all the secrets to growing, cultivating, and arranging gorgeous dahlias. These coveted floral treasures come in a dazzling range of colors, sizes, and forms, with enough variety for virtually every garden space and personal preference, making them one of the most beloved flowers for arrangements. In these pages, readers will discover: • Expert advice for planting, harvesting, and arranging garden-fresh dahlias • A simple-to-follow overview of the dahlia classification system • An A–Z guide with photos and descriptions of more than 350 varieties • Step-by-step how-to's for designing show-stopping dahlia bouquets that elevate any occasion Expert Author: Erin Benzakein's gorgeous flowers are celebrated throughout the world. Her book Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers was a New York Times bestseller and her first book, Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden, won the American Horticultural Society Book Award. Filled with Wisdom: Overflowing with hundreds of lush photographs and invaluable advice, DISCOVERING DAHLIAS is an essential resource for gardeners and a must-have for anyone who loves flowers, including flower lovers, avid and novice gardeners, floral designers, florists, small farmers, stylists, and designers.




The Humane Gardener


Book Description

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.




Vegetables Love Flowers


Book Description

Fight garden pests and increase your yields the natural way with this tried and true technique! Planting vegetables and flowers together is one of the oldest ways to create a healthy, bountiful garden; but there's more to the method than you might think. Vegetables Love Flowers walks you through the ins and outs of companion planting, from how it works to which plants go together and how to grow the best garden for your climate. Alongside gorgeous garden photography, you'll also learn about: Seed-starting, growing, and harvesting How to make garden flower bouquets, with "recipes" for various arrangements How to attract beneficial creatures to pollinate your garden and prey on its pests Pesticide-free pest-control measures Composting heaps and bins With the right information and some careful planning, you can help your plants thrive—and beautify your garden in the process.




Martha's Flowers


Book Description

The essential resource from Martha Stewart, with expert advice and lessons on gardening and making the most of your spectacular blooms Martha Stewart's lifelong love of flowers began at a young age, as she dug in and planted alongside her father in their family garden, growing healthy, beautiful blooms, every year. The indispensable lessons she learned then--and those she has since picked up from master gardeners--form the best practices she applies to her voluminous flower gardens today. For the first time, she compiles the wisdom of a lifetime spent gardening into a practical yet inspired book. Learn how and when to plant, nurture, and at the perfect time, cut from your garden. With lush blooms in hand, discover how to build stunning arrangements. Accompanied by beautiful photographs of displays in Martha's home, bursting with ideas, and covering every step from seed to vase, Martha's Flowers is a must-have handbook for flower gardeners and enthusiasts of all skill levels.




Dog Flowers


Book Description

A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother’s life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family’s troubled history. “A candid and achingly fractured memoir of [Geller’s] mother, her family, her Navajo heritage and her own journey to self-discovery and acceptance.”—Ms. SHORTLISTED FOR: The Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, The Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Esquire, She Reads When Danielle Geller’s mother dies of alcohol withdrawal during an attempt to get sober, Geller returns to Florida and finds her mother’s life packed into eight suitcases. Most were filled with clothes, except for the last one, which contained diaries, photos, and letters, a few undeveloped disposable cameras, dried sage, jewelry, and the bandana her mother wore on days she skipped a hair wash. Geller, an archivist and a writer, uses these pieces of her mother’s life to try and understand her mother’s relationship to home, and their shared need to leave it. Geller embarks on a journey where she confronts her family's history and the decisions that she herself had been forced to make while growing up, a journey that will end at her mother's home: the Navajo reservation. Dog Flowers is an arresting, photo-lingual memoir that masterfully weaves together images and text to examine mothers and mothering, sisters and caretaking, and colonized bodies. Exploring loss and inheritance, beauty and balance, Danielle Geller pays homage to our pasts, traditions, and heritage, to the families we are given and the families we choose.




I Can Grow a Flower


Book Description

A first garden story board book that reveals how plants grow with lift-the-flaps and a pullout height chart. Teach your child how a tiny seed grows into a flower in this fascinating lift-the-flap garden story. A pullout height chart ends the book--a great way for children to remember how a sunflower grows, and to measure how fast your child grows, too! Through illustrations, photography, and flaps, sixteen delightful board book pages reveal the wonder of how plants grow as you follow the story of a mystery seed. How was it planted? What does it need? What will it become? As days go by, it's hard to imagine the tiny shoot will ever grow into a big, strong plant. Could it magically become the tallest of all the garden flowers? Flaps unfold to show plants growing, creatures hiding, and what's happening underground. The book includes very simple gardening projects and facts about garden creatures (which ones are good for plants, and which ones are bad), and children will find out what a pollinator is, and how to attract pollinators to the garden. The perfect gift for aspiring gardeners, complete with a height chart.