Featuring stunning new illustrations and up-to-date information on plants, pest control, fertilizers, gardening techniques, and more, this favorite book of gardeners for more than ten years illuminates both the fundamentals and the special flourishes with easy-to-understand language and clear illustrations.

    This book will make gardening easier by providing helpful guidelines and realistic advice, so you can plan out your time efficiently and effectively.Packed with beautiful photo galleries that showcase each month's "Star Plant", you'll be inspired to have your own garden blooming throughout the year! Explore more than 350 different varieties in the A-Z illustrated plant directory. Discover top tips to guide you with clear, easy-to-follow gardening advice and illustrated step-by-step projects and gardening ideas. This fully updated edition includes brand-new visual galleries that showcase a garden throughout the year, with inspirational ideas for achieving colour schemes, your favourite scent, or striking foliage in your garden.Discover How to Keep Your Garden Beautiful from January to DecemberWhatever your level of skills in the garden, expert advice from the well-known gardener, Ian Spence, will help you keep your garden thriving all year round. RHS Gardening Through The Years is a must-have for anyone who has a green thumb! Inside the pages of this easy-to-follow gardening guide, you'll find:- Essential gardening advice.- Month-by-month chapters and handy to-do lists so you can keep on top of your garden tasks.- Photo galleries that showcase each month's best plants and flowers.- Illustrated plant directory with over 350 different varieties for you to explore.Happy gardening!

    Entries feature a description of the plant, its botanical name, its native range and its primary functions -- edible, medicinal, commercial or practical. Concise text is highlighted by elegant botanical drawings, paintings and photographs as well as insightful quotes.Many of the plants are well known, such as rice, tea, cotton, rubber, wheat, sugarcane, tobacco, wine grapes and corn. However, there are also many whose stories are less known. These history-changing plants include:Agave, used to make sisal, poison arrows, bullets, tequila and surgical threadPineapple, which influenced the construction of greenhouses and conservatoriesHemp, used for hangman's rope, sustainable plastics, the Declaration of Independence and Levi's jeansCoconut, used for coir fiber, soap, margarine, cream, sterile IV drips and coagulantsEucalyptus, used in mouthwash, diuretics, vitamins, honey, underwear and fire-resistant uniformsSweet pea, which Gregor Mendel used in his research on genetic heredityWhite mulberry, used to make silkEnglish oak, used for fire-resistant structures, dyes, leather tanning, charcoal, casks and shipsWhite willow, used in the manufacture of aspirin, cricket bats, hot-air balloon baskets and coffins This attractive reference provides an innovative perspective on both botanical and human history.

    #4 on Publishers Weekly's Bestselling Gardening Books list! This new, completely revised edition has over 500 new photographs, 400 new illustrations, 400 new plants and trees, the latest pest control recommendations, fruit and vegetable recommendations, new tips and plants specifically for Southern Texas, plus everything in the first edition.

    Marian Parsons gets giddy over room makeovers. With a lot of ingenuity, a little bit of effort, and a tight budget, she has transformed her home into a beautiful space and filled her heart with a lot more contentment. Thousands have found inspiration at Marian’s blog, missmustardseed.com , and now she shares dozens of new projects, ideas, and DIY adventures in the pages of Inspired You.Marian will remind you that homes don’t have to be magazine material to be special, comfortable, and inviting. The goal you’re working toward is home. Not a perfect home. Not an “impress the neighbors” home. Just home—one whose walls and rooms tell the story of the family who lives there. Beautiful homes start with inspiration and a willingness to try. So uncover your God-given creativity. Be encouraged, be willing, and be inspired.

    Learn how the puppy's body and mind develop and what you can do to shape his behavior into a well-adjusted, well behaved dog. Explains what breeders should do during the puppy's first seven weeks to insure that the puppy adapts well to family life, plus positive methods for socialization and training puppies of any breed from birth to one year of age.

    With expert advice on choosing and maintaining the best plants for your needs, Joe Fisher and Dennis Fisher show you how to turn a small patch of backyard, or even a few window boxes, into a renewable brewing supply store. Discover the satisfaction that comes from brewing tasty beers using fresh homegrown ingredients.

    It grows wild in twenty-six states, gracing Eastern forests each fall with sweet-smelling, tropical-flavored abundance. Historically, it fed and sustained Native Americans and European explorers, presidents, and enslaved African Americans, inspiring folk songs, poetry, and scores of place names from Georgia to Illinois. Its trees are an organic grower’s dream, requiring no pesticides or herbicides to thrive, and containing compounds that are among the most potent anticancer agents yet discovered.So why have so few people heard of the pawpaw, much less tasted one? In Pawpaw, author Andrew Moore explores the past, present, and future of this unique fruit, traveling from the Ozarks to Monticello; canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit; drinking pawpaw beer in Durham, North Carolina; tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers; and helping out during harvest season in a Maryland orchard. Along the way, he gathers pawpaw lore and knowledge not only from the plant breeders and horticulturists working to bring pawpaws into the mainstream (including Neal Peterson, known in pawpaw circles as the fruit’s own “Johnny Pawpawseed”), but also regular folks who remember eating them in the woods as kids, but haven’t had one in over fifty years.As much as Pawpaw is a compendium of pawpaw knowledge, it also plumbs deeper questions about American foodways―how economic, biologic, and cultural forces combine, leading us to eat what we eat, and sometimes to ignore the incredible, delicious food growing all around us. If you haven’t yet eaten a pawpaw, this book won’t let you rest until you do.

    A picture of yourself with your practically perfect dog. You've always preferred big dogs, and your ideal dog is sturdy, strong, and energetic. At the same time, you envision a dog who is gentle and completely in tune to your needs, your whims, and your every move. That perfect dog is likely a Labrador Retriever. After all, the Labrador Retriever is the most popular dog in the United States, according to American Kennel Club registrations. Labs are beautiful, friendly, adaptable, easygoing, brave, loyal, dependable, and intelligent. What could be better? Labrador Retrievers For Dummies is a useful guide to have if you're thinking of getting a Lab or even if you already own one. Perhaps you're just curious about this popular breed. This handy reference is for you if you want toFind out if a Lab suits your lifestyle Know what to look for in Lab pups Determine if a breeder meets high standards Understand health and nutrition needs Handle emergencies with a cool head Train your dog with the lure-and-reward technique Show off your Lab in competitions You can live a fulfilling life with your Lab by making sure she is socialized, healthy, and well trained. What better task for humans and dogs than to be great companions for each other? However, you may need some help in knowing how to get the most out of your relationship with your Lab. This friendly guide offers that help with the following topics and more:Exercising your pup and older Lab Choosing the right veterinarian Exploring spaying/neutering Keeping your Lab beautiful with good grooming Helping your dog deal with divorce, a new baby, moving Managing barking and whining Housetraining your new puppy Traveling to dog-friendly vacation destinations Choosing a pet sitter or boarding kennel Volunteering your lab as a therapy dog Labrador Retrievers are big, energetic, and sometimes boisterous (especially as puppies), and they don't take care of themselves. They need you. Don't let them need you unless you're ready to be needed.

    With easy recipes ethnobotanist James Wong shows how to make simple creams, salves, teas and much, much more from the stuff growing in your window box, the local garden centre or in the hedgerows. Using the flowers, fruit, roots, trees, vegetables and herbs that are all around us James provides preparations to help relieve a whole range of common conditions, including acne, anxiety, cold sores and general aches and pains - plus great ideas for beauty treats such as bath bombs and shampoos. Inspired by his grandmother in Malaysia who taught him about the health-giving properties of plants, James uses his top class academic knowledge to show how easy - and cheap - it is to make creams, lotions, lozenges and more which can help relieve the symptoms of a variety of common complaints. He reveals how many plants contain the same active ingredients as over-the-counter drugs and chooses his Top 100 plants to grow or buy, complete with ideas for a whole range of uses.So unleash the power of plants and soothe the symptoms of everyday ailments the natural way.

    It should be easy to maintain, yet full of variety and enjoyed. With the help of this unique book, readers can be their own garden designer and create an imaginative garden suited to the way they live. 590 color photographs and illustrations.

    But the cakes, cookies, pies, and goodies assembled in Rosie's Bakery are hands-down the best you'll ever taste. And aren't you worth the treat? A nationally celebrated baker from Boston, Judy Rosenberg shares 200 of her recipes, including Pieces of Cakes: Rosie's Famous Sour Cream Chocolate Layer Cake, The Queen Raspberry, The Velvet Underground. The Smart Cookies: Orange-Pecan-Chocolate Chip Cookies, Gingersnappers, Sunken Kisses, Very Short Shortbread Cookies. The Harvard Squares: Extra Extra Fudgy Brownies, Chunky Chocolate Bars, Honeypots, Linzer Bars. The Cutie Pies: All-American Apple Pie, Blueberry-Plum Crumb Pie, Nectarine Synergie, Raspberry Chiffon Pie. And The Old Smoothies: Bourbon Bread Pudding, Pumpkin Caramel Custard, Truffle SoufflS. Along the way, the author proves to be a trusted and knowledgeable guide who reveals almost all the hard-won secrets of her baking success. She lists her five basic rules of baking, and gives instructions on how to mix, bake, remove, serve, and store every different kind of baked good-from angel food cakes to filled pastry cookies. Winner of a 1991 IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award. 181,000 copies in print.

    A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. "As delicious a meditation on one man's relationships with the Earth as any you are likely to come upon" (The New York Times Book Review), Second Nature captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the outdoors in all its glory and exasperation. With chapters ranging from a reconsideration of the Great American Lawn, a dispatch from one man's war with a woodchuck, to an essay about the sexual politics of roses, Pollan has created a passionate and eloquent argument for reconceiving our relationship with nature.

    Tight spine, clear crisp pages, no writing, no spine creases, light edgewear, smokefree.

    You Grow Girl is a hip, humorous how-to for crafty gals everywhere who are discovering a passion for gardening but lack the know-how to turn their dreams of homegrown tomatoes and fresh-cut flowers into a reality. Gayla Trail, creator of YouGrowGirl.com, provides guidance for both beginning and intermediate gardeners with engaging tips, projects, and recipes -- whether you have access to a small backyard or merely to a fire escape. You Grow Girl eliminates the intimidation factor and reveals how easy and enjoyable it can be to cultivate plants and flowers even when resources and space are limited. Divided into accessible sections like Plan, Plant, and Grow, You Grow Girl takes readers through the entire gardening experience: Preparing soil Nurturing seedlings Fending off crittersReaping the bounty Readying plants for winter Preparing for the seasons ahead Gayla also includes a wealth of ingenious and creative projects, such as: Transforming your garden's harvest into lush bath and beauty products Converting household junk into canny containers Growing and bagging herbal tea Concocting homemade pest repellents ...and much, much more. Witty, wise, and as practical as it is stylish, You Grow Girl is guaranteed to show you how to get your garden on. All you need is a windowsill and a dream!