Designing with Succulents
by Debra Lee Baldwin
from Timber Press, Incorporated
Succulent plants offer dazzling possibilities for garden design and require only minimal maintenance to remain lush and alluring year round. Featuring the work of more than 50 professional garden designers and creative homeowners, this complete design compendium is as practical as it is inspirational. Lavishly illustrated with over 300 photographs, it gives design and cultivation basics for paths, borders, slopes, and containers; hundreds of succulent plant recommendations; and descriptions of 90 easy-care, drought-tolerant companion plants. Beginners and experienced designers, landscapers, and collectors alike will find what they need to visualize, create, and nurture the three-dimensional work of art that is the succulent garden.
Gardening All-in-One for Dummies
by The National Gardening Association
from For Dummies
God almighty first planted a garden: and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
-- Sir Francis Bacon
National surveys show that gardening has become the most popular, least exclusive hobby nationwide. From the balconies of Manhattan to the patios of Malibu to the backyards of Chicago, anybody with a few square feet of earth is doing their best to make their little corner of the world more gracious and beautiful. And the best thing is, you really dont have to be born with a green thumb to give life to a glorious garden. Anybody can do it with a little coaching. Which is where Gardening For Dummies comes in.
Puzzled by pruning? Baffled by bulbs? Cant tell a hosta from a hyacinth? Dont worry! This all-in-one reference delivers the know-how you need to transform your little patch of the outdoors into a blooming paradise. Drawing upon the expertise of the National Gardening Association, it gets you up to speed on:
- Basic gardening skillsfrom understanding your microclimate to using gardening tools to managing pests and common plant diseases
- How to design, plan and build a garden landscape that reflects your unique sense of style
- Selecting, planting and maintaining stunning roses
- Building a raised bed for your perennials and making them bloom in any climate
- Choose, grow and maintain annuals
- From amaryllis to spider dahlias to wood tulipscoaxing beauty from homely bulbs
- Enjoying natures bounty by growing you own vegetables and herbs
A veritable encyclopedia of gardening, this Gardening For Dummies is an indispensable resource for novices and experienced gardeners alike. It brings together between the covers of a single volume seven great books covering:
- Gardening Basics
- Garden Design
- Roses
- Perennials
- Annuals
- Bulbs
- Vegetables and Herbs
Your one-step guide to a beautiful garden, Gardening For Dummies shows you how to experience the purest of human pleasures in your own backyard.
Landscaping with Stone (Home Landscaping)
by Pat Sagui
from Creative Homeowner
Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community
by Heather Coburn Flores
from Chelsea Green
Gardening can be a political act. Creativity, fulfillment, connection, revolution--it all begins when we get our hands in the dirt. Food Not Lawns combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens." But Food Not Lawns doesnÂ’t begin and end in the seed bed. This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden--simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community--to all aspects of life. Plant "guerilla gardens" in barren intersections and medians; organize community meals; start a street theater troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; work with children to create garden play spaces. Flores cares passionately about the damaged state of our environment and the ills of our throwaway society. In Food Not Lawns, she shows us how to reclaim the earth one garden at a time.
Sunset Western Landscaping Book
from Sunset Publishing Corporation
This all-new second edition, the companion book to the much-beloved Western Garden Book, promises to be just as successful as the first. Packed with expert advice from landscape designers, gardeners, and others, it addresses climatic, soil, and topographical challengesand solutionsfor Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and southwestern Canada. Features n The only landscaping guide designed specifically for Western gardeners n Over 600 photographs and dozens of ready-to-use landscape plans n Step-by-step illustrations and exploded views show easy, do-it-yourself solutions n Seasonal gardening guides and checklists ensure year-round success for experienced and novice gardeners alike n Easy-to-understand plant selection and growing instructions
A Garden for Life: The Natural Approach to Designing, Planting, and Maintaining a North Temperate Garden
by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
from University of Michigan Press/Regional
The avid gardener will need no other resource than this book to plan and maintain a natural garden on the country farm or in the suburban backyard, a habitat congenial to the scarlet tanager, the monarch butterfly, and the toad.
Unique to this book is author Beresford-Kroeger's concept of bioplanning, in which the gardener views the site as a biological system and the activity of gardening as an ecological task. To assist in bioplanning a garden, the author provides both plans that are adaptable to different garden sizes and shapes, as well as planting instructions emphasizing organic care, ecofunction, and environmentally friendly means of pest control.
A Garden for Life challenges everyone to create an ecologically valuable garden for the joy of doing so, and for the salvation of our natural world.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger is the author of Arboretum America. She is a botanist, medical and agricultural researcher, lecturer, and self-defined "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
The Audubon Backyard Birdwatcher: Birdfeeders and Bird Gardens
by Robert Burton
from Thunder Bay Press
Discover how to create a backyard bird sanctuary with the expert guidance of the National Audubon Society. Your backyard will come alive by applying these feeding and gardening techniques. Includes a photographic guide to the birds of North America, as well as the trees and plants that attract them. The ultimate resource for anyone interested in creating a bird-friendly habitat.
Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition
by Robert Pogue Harrison
from University Of Chicago Press
With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur’an; Plato’s Academy and Epicurus’s Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt—all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power.
Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison’s earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility—and its enduring importance to humanity.
In A Mexican Garden: Courtyards, Pools, and Open-Air Living Rooms
by Gina Hyams
from Chronicle Books
The team behind the best-selling Mexicolor and Mexicasa has unlocked the gates to Mexico's patios, courtyards, and walled gardens. From private homes to luxurious resorts, In A Mexican Garden celebrates Mexico's hidden oases where lovers meet for margaritas at sunset and families gather for spirited fiestas. The dazzling array of featured properties includes rustic coastal hideaways, elegant Spanish Colonial mansions, rural haciendas, and Modernist architectural masterpieces. Melba Levick's stunning photographs capture page after vibrant page of bold Mexican design elements: swirling mosaic floors, elaborate frescoes, hand-carved stone fountains, and lush native plants. Gina Hyams' informative text explains the historic roots of these uniquely Mexican outdoor spaces. Garden design enthusiasts, fans of Mexico, and anyone who appreciates a siesta in the sun need only open this book to hear the quiet babble of fountains and glasses clinking to toast another beautiful sunset.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn
from Metropolis Books
The Edible Estates project proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn with a highly productive edible landscape. It was initiated by architect and artist Fritz Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, with the planting of the first regional prototype garden in the geographic center of the United States, Salina, Kansas. Since then three more prototype gardens have been created, in Lakewood, California; Maplewood, New Jersey and London, England. Edible Estates regional prototype gardens will ultimately be established in nine cities across the United States.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn documents the first four gardens with personal accounts written by the owners, garden plans and photographs illustrating the creation of the gardens--from ripping up the grass to harvesting a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Essays by Haeg, landscape architect Diana Balmori, garden and food writer Rosalind Creasy, author Michael Pollan and artist and writer Lesley Stern set the Edible Estates project in the context of larger issues concerning the environment, global food production and the imperative to generate a sense of community in our urban and suburban neighborhoods. This smart, affordable and well-designed book also includes reports and photographs from the owners of other edible front yards around the country, as well as helpful resources to guide you in making your own Edible Estate.
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