The Backyard Orchardist: A Complete Guide to Growing Fruit Trees in the Home Garden
by Stella Otto
from Ottographics
For every gardener desiring to add apples, pears, cherries, and other tree fruit to their landscape here are hints and solid information from a professional horticulturist and experienced fruit grower. The Backyard Orchardist includes help on selecting the best fruit trees and information about each stage of growth and development, along with tips on harvest and storage of the fruit. Those with limited space will learn about growing dwarf fruit trees in containers.
Appendices include a fruit-growers monthly calendar, a trouble-shooting guide for reviving ailing trees, and a resource list of nurseries selling fruit trees.
Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia
by Michael A. Dirr
from Timber Press, Incorporated
This bestselling encyclopedia, illustrated with brilliant photographs, describes the best woody plants adapted to cooler climates, showing both habit and details of more than 500 species, and including some 700 additional cultivars and varieties. Brief cultural information is supplied for each plant, as well as Dirr's perceptive comments and opinions.
This bestselling encyclopedia, illustrated with brilliant photographs, describes the best woody plants adapted to cooler climates, showing both habit and details of more than 500 species, and including some 700 additional cultivars and varieties. Brief cultural information is supplied for each plant, as well as Dirr's perceptive comments and opinions.
Viburnums: Flowering Shrubs for Every Season
by Michael Dirr
from Timber Press
With their abundance of flower, handsome foliage, robust constitution, and frequently stunning fruits, viburnums are among the most beautiful and versatile hardy shrubs available to gardeners. Yet despite these outstanding qualities, there has never been an entire volume devoted to them—until now. In this definitive, comprehensive, generously illustarted guide, internationally renowned woody plant expert Michael Dirr provides a wealth of information about every species and cultivar worthy of horticultural consideration. Never one to pull punches, Dirr bestows praise on viburnums that deserve it and is frank in his evaluation of other plants' occasional shortcomings. These finely judged appraisals make it easy for the gardener or designer to choose the right plant for the right situation.
Whether you're a home gardener in search of a four-season shrub; a nursery professional seeking woody plants with proven appeal; or a designer looking for specimens that are both functional and guaranteed to impress clients, Viburnums will acquaint you with a group of plants capable of meeting all these requirements.
Michael Dirr has said that a garden without viburnums is like a life without the pleasures of music and art. After reading just a few pages of this unparalleled work, you're sure to agree.
Manual of Woody Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Ornamental Characteristics, Culture, Propagation and Uses
by Michael A. Dirr
from Stipes Publishing, LLC
Hydrangeas for American Gardens
by Michael A. Dirr
from Timber Press, Incorporated
The sheer number of choices among Hydrangea species, hybrids, and cultivated varieties can be overwhelming even for the most advanced gardeners. How to choose from among the hundreds of mopheads, climbers, lacecaps, and oakleafs, to name just a few? And how to care for hydrangeas in American gardens, when nearly all the books offering advice about them come from England and Europe? Respected plantsman Michael A. Dirr comes to the rescue in this refreshingly forthright and practical guide to these distinctive shrubs and climbers.
The sheer number of choices among Hydrangea species, hybrids, and cultivated varieties can be overwhelming even for the most advanced gardeners. How to choose from among the hundreds of mopheads, climbers, lacecaps, and oakleafs, to name just a few? And how to care for hydrangeas in American gardens, when nearly all the books offering advice about them come from England and Europe? Respected plantsman Michael A. Dirr comes to the rescue in this refreshingly forthright and practical guide.
The Shrub Identification Book: The Visual Method for the Practical Identification of Shrubs, Including Woody Vines and Ground Covers
by George W. Symonds
from William Morrow
The Visual Method for the Practical Identification and Recognition of Shrubs (and vines and ground covers) -- and an important supplement to existing botanical methods.
The book is in two parts: Pictorial Keys and Master Pages. The Keys are designed for easy visual comparison of details which look alike, narrowing the identification of a shrub to one of a small group -- the family or genus.
Then, in the Master Pages, the species of the shrub is determined, with similar details placed together to highlight differences within the family group, thus eliminating all other possibilities. The details of laurel blossoms on this plate are an example and are followed in the book by details of laurel fruit, leaves, and bark.
All of the 3,550 photographs were made specifically for use in this book and were taken either in the field or of fresh material carefully selected from the more than 20,000 specimens collected. Wherever possible, details such as leaves, fruit, twigs, etc., appear in actual size; otherwise, similar details are reproduced in the same scale.
Timber Press Pocket Guide to Japanese Maples (Timber Press Pocket Guides)
by J. D. Vertrees
from Timber Press, Incorporated
The Timber Press Pocket Guide to Japanese Maples describes and illustrates 300 of the most widely available Japanese maples in North America and Europe. Along with basic information on cultivation and maintenance, it provides lists of trees for specific landscape uses, enabling gardeners to select the best trees for various garden conditions. Fifty newer cultivars are presented, including four outstanding trees that are expected to become very popular in the near future. The guide is a valuable complement to the 3rd edition of J. D. Vertrees' Japanese Maples (updated in 2001 by Peter Gregory). Its handy format makes it an ideal reference for taking to the nursery or garden center.
How to Build Treehouses, Huts and Forts
by David Stiles
from The Lyons Press
Not assuming anything about the treehouse builder, Stiles starts with the basics: how to nail, how to buy wood, what kind of screws and nails to use.
Then it's on to an A-frame design so simple that it can be built in a weekend out of four sheets of plywood, followed by lean-tos, a tree hut, and a Tarzan-style jungle hideaway. There are also forts of every description, including a 21-foot-tall lookout tower modeled on one George Washington built to keep an eye on the redcoats.
Stiles also adds a design for a snowball catapult, an igloo and even a Nerf-loaded cannon.
Written for children, with an adult peeking over their shoulder, Stiles's TREEHOUSES, HUTS, & FORTS is a dreamer's handbook, offering practical results.
Lavender: The Grower's Guide
by Virginia McNaughton
from Timber Press, Incorporated
With their heady perfume and stunning visual appeal, lavenders have been prized by gardeners since ancient times. Lavender is a truly comprehensive study that enables the reader to research and identify more than 200 lavender species and varieties. With chapters on cultivation, propagation, pests and diseases, and botanical history, this book is as practical as it is authoritative. More than 200 photos document recent advances in color variation that have resulted from intense breeding; plants now available range from deep purple and lilac to white, cream, pink, and red-violet. With so many hardy and dependable plants to choose from, no lavender enthusiast will want to be without this indispensable book.
More than 200 lavender species & cultivars are described in detail, enabling gardeners to decipher the intricacies of lavender identification.
Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines: A Guide to Using, Growing, and Propagating North American Woody Plants
by William Cullina
from Houghton Mifflin
For gardeners, for landscape professionals, and for anyone who cares about preserving the natural world, NATIVE TREES, SHRIBS, AND VINES is the first national guide to using, growing, and propagating North American woody plants.
Written in lively, informative language and illustrated with more than two hundred photographs, William Cullina's book is a comprehensive reference to almost one thousand native woody plants. An invaluable guide for naturalists, restorationists, nursery owners, landscape architects, and designers as well as gardeners, it points out that ecological gardening offers specific benefits to the individual as well as the environment. Even more than wildflowers, native trees, shrubs, and vines are essential to providing the food and shelter that attract birds and insects to the garden. And plants that are native to an area are far easier to grow and maintain than ordinary cultivated garden plants.
The author's acclaimed companion volume on wildflowers, GROWING AND PROPAGATING WILDFLOWERS, was called "an inspired effort, beautifully written and loaded with useful information" by Robert G. Breunig, director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Along with that volume, NATIVE TREES, SHRUBS, AND VINES provides a definitive reference to the native plants of the temperate North American continent. And because Cullina writes from personal experience with the plants in his books, he offers information that is considerably more helpful (and more interesting) than the facts one finds in most plant references.
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