The Pollinator Victory Garden offers practical solutions for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals. Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators. But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators. With The Pollinator Victory Garden, you can give pollinators a fighting chance. Learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming. Find a wealth of information to support pollinators while improving the environment around you:  •  The importance of pollinators and the specific threats to their survival•  How to provide food for pollinators using native perennials, trees, and shrubs that bloom in succession•  Detailed profiles of the major pollinator types and how to attract and support each one•  Tips for creating and growing a Pollinator Victory Garden, including site assessment, planning, and planting goals•  Project ideas like pollinator islands, enriched landscape edges, revamped foundation plantings, meadowscapes, and other pollinator-friendly lawn alternatives  The time is right for a new gardening movement. Every yard, community garden, rooftop, porch, patio, commercial, and municipal landscape can help to win the war against pollinator decline with The Pollinator Victory Garden.

    For easy navigation, the book is divided into thematic changes - covering everything from Plant Parts to Plant Pests - and further subdivided into useful headings, such as 'Seed Sowing' and 'Pruning'. In addition, feature spreads profile the remarkable individuals who have collected, studied and illustrated the plants that we grow today, and 'Botany in Action' boxes provide instantly accessible practical tips and advice.Aided by this book, every gardener - and every garden - will benefit from unlocking the wealth of information that lies within the intriguing world of botanical science.

    Monty Don's personal chronicle of a year in his garden, including both successes and failures, shows how an organic lifestyle can be adopted by anyone, and organic gardening can be practiced in a yard of any size.

    "A colorful (and meticulous) how-to guide for creating gorgeous indoor and outdoor window boxes."--Real SimpleMeet the window box: by far the most accessible garden for any skill level, space, or quality of light. Whether your window faces south where the sun floods in or north with nothing but shade, these indoor and outdoor projects show you how to easily grow succulents, herbs, cacti, monstera, and more.Bright photography and instructions take you from understanding soil and watering needs to personalizing your own box, making this a great primer for anyone who's green to gardening.

    It starts with clear explanations of the concepts and fundamentals of green, healthy and energy-efficient construction and walks the reader through the entire construction process, injecting expert advice at every decision point. Construction techniques, materials, and products are thoroughly explained, making the often vaguely understood concepts cleanly understandable. The book gives builders and architects the tools to respond to growing requests from homeowners for green and energy-efficient houses, whether new or remodeled. Homeowners can use the book to understand the concepts, process, and options, whether they're doing it themselves or working with a professional.

    In the last half of The Resilient Gardener, Deppe extends and illustrates these principles with detailed information about growing and using five key crops: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs.In this book you'll learn how to:-Garden in an era of unpredictable weather and climate change-Grow, store, and use more of your own staple crops-Garden efficiently and comfortably (even if you have a bad back)-Grow, store, and cook different varieties of potatoes and save your own potato seed-Grow the right varieties of corn to make your own gourmet-quality fast-cooking polenta, cornbread, parched corn, corn cakes, pancakes and even savory corn gravy-Make whole-grain, corn-based breads and cakes using the author's original gluten-free recipes involving no other grains, artificial binders, or dairy products-Grow and use popbeans and other grain legumes-Grow, store, and use summer, winter, and drying squash-Keep a home laying flock of ducks or chickens; integrate them with your gardening, and grow most of their feed.The Resilient Gardener is both a conceptual and a hands-on organic gardening book, and is suitable for vegetable gardeners at all levels of experience. Resilience here is broadly conceived and encompasses a full range of problems, from personal hard times such as injuries, family crises, financial problems, health problems, and special dietary needs (gluten intolerance, food allergies, carbohydrate sensitivity, and a need for weight control) to serious regional and global disasters and climate change. It is a supremely optimistic as well as realistic book about how resilient gardeners and their vegetable gardens can flourish even in challenging times and help their communities to survive and thrive through everything that comes their way -- from tomorrow through the next thousand years. Organic gardening, vegetable gardening, self-sufficiency, subsistence gardening, gluten-free living.

    Whether you are looking to pick a statement plant for your living room, create a terrarium centerpiece, or arrange an artful display of air plants, this book will provide the tools you need. And like the garden spaces it will inspire, the book will be a piece of art to display. You'll be tempted to thumb through it again and again--for both resource and relaxation. Includes:-Plant Basics: beginner-friendly plant care info-Plant Guide: profiles of popular indoor plants-Plant Projects: fun, easy projects with major wow factor (including trending designs like terrariums, air plants, marimo and other underwater gardens, kokedama, mounted staghorn ferns, and edible herbs)-Plant Style: ways to use plants in interior design for every style from Desert Boho to Midcentury Modern

    Here, she offers her best guidance, methods, and DIY projects for organizing in and around your home. Topics include room-by-room strategies (how to sort office paperwork, when to purge the garage or attic), seasonal advice (when to swap out bedding and clothing, how to put away holiday decorations), and day-by-day or week-by-week plans for projects such as de-cluttering, house cleaning, creating a filing system, overhauling the closet, and more. Martha’s indispensable expertise walks you through goal-setting, principles of organizing, useful supplies, and creating systems for ongoing success. A look into Martha’s own personal calendars offers a template for scheduling essential tasks. Last, plenty of strategies, how-tos, timelines, and checklists will help you stay organized all year long.

    The roots of a tree indicate the sun’s direction; the Big Dipper tells the time; a passing butterfly hints at the weather; a sand dune reveals prevailing wind; the scent of cinnamon suggests altitude; a budding flower points south. To help you understand nature as he does, Gooley shares more than 850 tips for forecasting, tracking, and more, gathered from decades spent walking the landscape around his home and around the world. Whether you’re walking in the country or city, along a coastline, or by night, this is the ultimate resource on what the land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and clouds can reveal—if you only know how to look!

    Let master gardener Sally Jean Cunningham show you how to keep pests and diseases at bay with her unique companion-gardening system. By planting special combinations of vegetables, flowers, and herbs, you can minimize pest and disease problems and create a high-yielding, beautiful garden!

    Never before in history have children been so plugged in—and so out of touch with the natural world. In this groundbreaking new work, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression. Some startling facts: By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, average eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. The rate at which doctors prescribe antidepressants to children has doubled in the last five years, and recent studies show that too much computer use spells trouble for the developing mind. Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual. What's more, nature is a potent therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Even creativity is stimulated by childhood experiences in nature. Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Computers, television, and video games compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fears of traffic, strangers, even virus-carrying mosquitoes—fears the media exploit—that keep children indoors. Meanwhile, schools assign more and more homework, and there is less and less access to natural areas. Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the "last child in the woods," and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion.

    This plant-by-plant guide includes profiles of more than 765 tasty varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and nuts. In addition to expert advice on selecting suitable plants and growing, harvesting, and storing them, this invaluable resource includes more than 100 tried-and-true organic remedies that fight off diseases and pests. Get out in your vegetable garden and discover how easy and fun it is to grow your own healthy food.

    Make anise hyssop into a refreshing iced tea and turn apricots into a facial mask. Crabapple branches can be used to create stunning floral arrangements, oregano flowers to infuse vinegar, and edible chrysanthemum to liven up a salad. With the remarkable, multi-purpose plants in Harvest, there is always something for gardeners to harvest from one growing season to the next.

    Now, in this expanded edition, there's even more to learn from and enjoy. This is the first, and still the most thorough, book to detail essential practices of perennial care such as deadheading, pinching, cutting back, thinning, disbudding, and deadleafing, all of which are thoroughly explained and illustrated. More than 200 new color photographs have been added to this revised edition, showing perennials in various border situations and providing images for each of the entries in the A-to-Z encyclopedia of important perennial species. In addition, there is a new 32-page journal section, in which you can enter details, notes, and observations about the requirements and performance of perennials in your own garden. Thousands of readers have commented that The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is one of the most useful and frequently consulted books in their gardening libraries. This new, expanded edition promises to be an even more effective ally in your quest to create a beautiful, healthy, well-maintained perennial garden.

    She found her next chapter in northwestern Connecticut, on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland around a former Methodist church. In Uprooted, Dickey reflects on this transition and on what it means for a gardener to start again. In these pages, fol­low her journey: searching for a new home, discovering the ins and outs of the landscape surround­ing her new garden, establishing the garden, and learning how to be a different kind of gardener. The sur­prise at the heart of the book? Although Dickey was sad to leave her beloved garden, she found herself thrilled to begin a new garden in a wilder, larger landscape.   Written with humor and elegance, Uprooted is an endearing story about transitions—and the satisfaction and joy that new horizons can bring.