Kristen Green highlights plants that help a garden quickly grow by self-sowing and spreading and teaches you how to expand the garden and extend the life of a plant by overwintering. The book features plant profiles for 50 self-sowers (including columbine, milkweed, and foxglove), 50 spreaders (such as clematis, snow poppy, and spearmint), and 50 plants that overwinter (including lemon verbena, begonia, and Chinese hibiscus). Additional gardening tips, design ideas, and inspirational photos will motivate and inspire gardeners of all levels.

    Choosing perennials that look great and grow well together is a skill that can take years to develop, but with this book, you're guaranteed to make perfect plant choices right from the start. In Perennial Combinations, expert plantsman, C. Colston Burrell hand-selects 120 of the best perennial combinations for homeowners, then offers his expert advice on how to grow and use the combinations to create great gardens.Each combination is featured in a stunning color photograph accompanied by a numbered photo key and plant list, so it's easy to find and buy exactly the right plants to re-create the combination in your own garden. Each combination features just two to six plants, so they're perfect for even the smallest garden space. You can plant each combination just as it appears in the book, or for a bigger color splash, just repeat the combination or mix it with others that are suited to the same conditions. You'll find combinations for stunning bloom from spring through fall; combinations especially suited to challenging sites like heavy clay soil or seaside gardens; and combinations just for fun, like fragrant combinations and combinations that attract butterflies.C. Colston Burrell has lived and gardened in different climates across America, so he's made sure this book is useful to gardeners from California to Maine. He's also a professional garden designer, and he's applied his talents to create 22 original garden designs that feature the book's individual combinations. Plus every page includes his personal gardening wisdom, so you'll not only know which perennials to plant together, you'll know how to maintain those perennials so your garden will look beautiful year after year.

    “A new generation discovers grow-it-yourself dyes,” says the New York Times. And you don’t have to have a degree in chemistry to create your own natural dyes. It just takes a garden plot and a kitchen. A Garden to Dye For shows how super-simple it is to plant and grow a dyer’s garden and create beautiful dyes. Many of these plants may already be in our cutting, cottage or food gardens, ready for double duty. These special plants can fit right in with traditional garden themes. A Garden to Dye For features 40-plus plants that the gardener-crafter can grow for an all-natural, customized color palette. A dyer’s garden can be a mosaic of flowers, herbs, roots and fruits that lend us their pigments to beautify other areas of our lives. The richly photographed book is divided between the garden and the dye process, with garden layouts, plant profiles, dye extraction and uses, step-by-step recipes and original, engaging DIY projects. This is the book that bridges the topic of plant dyes to mainstream gardeners, the folks who enjoy growing the plants as much as using them in craft projects. www.agardentodyefor; and on Facebook: A Garden to Dye For

    Through brilliant, textured cut paper collages, the story follows the progress of a mother and daughter in their backyard as they plant bulbs, seeds, and seedlings and nurture their growth into flowers. Bold, spare text and dazzling illustrations will inspire readers to take a closer look at the natural world and maybe even start a garden of their own.

    Starting with the basics, learn how to pick the right plant for your home (and specifically what room), what levels of sunlight your plant needs and the best space for your plants to thrive.

    

    With lovely language and a sly sense of humor, this beautiful picture book celebrates the tenacious temperaments of these pesky plants and is sure to have little ones chanting, “Way to go, weeds!”

    Add hollyhocks and marigold, sunflowers and zinnias. Voilà! A quiet, tranquil, beautiful garden grows before your eyes. But who's that hiding in the corner?This cumulative story by the creators of On Market street, which won a Caldecott Honor Book Award, is sure to be a perennial favorite with youngsters -- and gardeners -- everywhere.

    More than just a field guide to wild edibles, it is a global plan for human survival. When Katrina Blair was eleven she had a life-changing experience where wild plants spoke to her, beckoning her to become a champion of their cause. Since then she has spent months on end taking walkabouts in the wild, eating nothing but what she forages, and has become a wild-foods advocate, community activist, gardener, and chef, teaching and presenting internationally about foraging and the healthful lifestyle it promotes. Katrina Blair's philosophy in The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is sobering, realistic, and ultimately optimistic. If we can open our eyes to see the wisdom found in these weeds right under our noses, instead of trying to eradicate an "invasive," we will achieve true food security. The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is about healing ourselves both in body and in spirit, in an age where technology, commodity agriculture, and processed foods dictate the terms of our intelligence. But if we can become familiar with these thirteen edible survival weeds found all over the world, we will never go hungry, and we will become closer to our own wild human instincts--all the while enjoying the freshest, wildest, and most nutritious food there is. For free! The thirteen plants found growing in every region across the world are: dandelion, mallow, purslane, plantain, thistle, amaranth, dock, mustard, grass, chickweed, clover, lambsquarter, and knotweed. These special plants contribute to the regeneration of the earth while supporting the survival of our human species; they grow everywhere where human civilization exists, from the hottest deserts to the Arctic Circle, following the path of human disturbance. Indeed, the more humans disturb the earth and put our food supply at risk, the more these thirteen plants proliferate. It's a survival plan for the ages. Including over one hundred unique recipes, Katrina Blair's book teaches us how to prepare these wild plants from root to seed in soups, salads, slaws, crackers, pestos, seed breads, and seed butters; cereals, green powders, sauerkrauts, smoothies, and milks; first-aid concoctions such as tinctures, teas, salves, and soothers; self-care/beauty products including shampoo, mouthwash, toothpaste (and brush), face masks; and a lot more. Whether readers are based at home or traveling, this book aims to empower individuals to maintain a state of optimal health with minimal cost and effort.

    He worked hard, very hard, but he was just too little (or at least he felt he was).A story that teaches us just how important it is to persist and try, no matter what the odds.

    Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group.Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.

    Showcase colorful blooms and striking foliage in conditions from full sun to full shade, with easy, budget-friendly garden plans and season-by-season care tips.

    Bosland, shares detailed profiles of the one hundred most popular chile varieties and include information on how to grow and cultivate them successfully, along with tips on planning, garden design, growing in containers, dealing with pests and disease, and breeding and hybridizing. Techniques for processing and preserving include canning, pickling, drying, and smoking. Eighty-five mouth-watering recipes show how to use the characteristic heat of chile peppers in beverages, sauces, appetizers, salads, soups, entrees, and desserts.

    The introduction contains illustrations of the main leaves, buds, and firs you are likely to find, and these provide the starting point for identification by leading you to a 'key' species.Within each tree family there is a list of key species and a guide to the most important features to look for when identifying a particular tree from that family. Then individual species are clearly described and a detailed illustration is given on the same page.Covering all the tree species found outside the major arboretums, from the olive tree to the eucalyptus, this is one of the most important tree guides to have appeared in the last 20 years. The illustrations are annotated with essential identification features, and the text highlights the most important things to look for to aid fast and accurate identification. There is also coverage of all the species native to Southern Europe.

    Ava is delighted when she discovers a brilliant red poppy in the middle of her yard.  She sits with the little flower in the sunny days of summer and shields it from the rain, until one day the petals start to drop and the tiny flower fades away.  But when spring comes again...Ava is surprised anew.