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.

    In recent years, the shrinking of green spaces has endangered the honeybee. Now Planting for Honeybees shows you how you can help these delightful pollinators to flourish by creating a garden as habitat for them. No matter how small or large your space – from a window ledge in the city to a country garden – Sarah Wyndham Lewis offers practical advice on which plants to grow and when and where to plant them. Charmingly illustrated with delicate drawings, this a jewel of a guide to treasure.

    Plants are a quick and easy way to add life, color, and texture to any indoor space. But houseplants offer so much more than just visual interest to a room. They can purify the air, reduce stress, improve sleep—and much more! Houseplants for a Healthy Home explains the specific health and wellness benefits of 50 common, easy-to-grow, and popular houseplants, while introducing you to new favorites bound to brighten your life. You will find an A-to-Z guide of a variety of the plants that includes a beautiful illustration of each plant, along with the plant’s health benefits and clear, detailed care instructions. Let Houseplants for a Healthy Home lead you to a life in full bloom.

    Presented in A-to-Z format, supplemented with easy-to-use charts and lists, beautifully illustrated with drawings and color photographs, it is the only book on herbs you ever need to buy.

    Beautiful and brimming with information, this indispensable guide contains all the advice you'll ever need--even if your thumb is brown--to create a gorgeous yard, a bountiful vegetable garden, or a lush green indoors.More than 400 full-color photos let you see exactly what plants look like--from flowers to trees to vegetables--both close up and in garden settings.More than 115 drawings show you how to step by step all the tricks to caring for a variety of plants.One hundred pages of illustrated plant portfolios and 65 pages of handy charts give you thorough descriptions of more than 800 plants, diseases and pests.

    A guide to 32 of the best and most common edible wild plants in North America, with detailed information on how to identify them, where they are found, how and when they are harvested, which parts are used, how they are prepared, as well as their culinary use, ecology, conservation, and cultural history.

    Now, with this beautifully illustrated book, Cadfael fans can spend a typical year with their favorite monk, following him on his rounds as Shrewsbury's apothecary and healer, visiting his garden', and learning more about hundreds of herbs -- many of which are still cultivated today. Here is a succinct history of herbal remedies and monastic herb gardens like Cadfael's, as well as a complete A-to-Z guide to the medical uses for every herb and plant mentioned in the Ellis Peters books. For anyone intrigued by Brother Cadfael's medieval universe -- or interested in the recent boom in herbal remedies -- Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden is a marvelous guide to greater knowledge.

    New plants, techniques, materials, and lifestyles are constantly broadening the choices you have and reshaping the way you garden in the West. In response to this natural evolution, the editors of Sunset-the West's most trusted source of gardening information for more than 80 years-have completely redesigned and updated The Western Garden Book in this new 2012 Ninth Edition. Following the best-selling success of the previous editions of The Western Garden Book, this edition includes a fresh new look, thousands of color photographs, fresh illustrations, and an easy-to-follow format. Written by experts for gardeners in the West, this book is an indispensable reference for beginning and expert gardeners alike.The New Western Garden Book features include:A photo gallery shows the West's most innovative gardens, from all-edibles front yards to stylish water-wise and fire-wise gardens to living walls and green roofs-all with ideas you can use.Climate Zone Maps and growing-season graphs for all regions of the West including Alaska and Hawaii.A new "Plant Finder" section helps you choose plants for their garden's problem areas or for special effects."A to Z Plant Encyclopedia" lists some 8,000 plants that thrive in the West, including more than 500 new ones. Gorgeous color photographs illustrate all plant entries-for the first time ever in The Western Garden Book."Gardening From Start to Finish" is a new visual guide that leads readers through all steps of making a garden, from soil prep through planting, growing and care, with special sections on natives, veggies, grasses and more.

    Despite being overlooked, in many ways, moss is perfect: it provides year-round color, excels in difficult climates, prevents soil erosion, and resists pests and disease. In The Magical World of Moss Gardening, bryophyte expert Annie Martin reveals how moss can be used in stunning, eco-friendly spaces. The beautifully illustrated guide includes basics on designing and planting a moss garden, as an inspiring tour of the most magical public and private moss gardens throughout the country.

    Obama invites you inside the White House Kitchen Garden and shares its inspiring story, from the first planting to the latest harvest.  Hear about her worries as a novice gardener – would the new plants even grow? Learn about her struggles and her joys as lettuce, corn, tomatoes, collards and kale, sweet potatoes and rhubarb flourished in the freshly tilled soil.  Get an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at every season of the garden’s growth, with striking original photographs that bring its story to life.  Try the unique recipes created by White House chefs and made with ingredients just picked from the White House garden.  And learn from the White House Garden team about how you can help plant your own backyard, school or community garden.   Mrs. Obama’s journey continues across the nation as she shares the stories of other gardens that have moved and inspired her: Houston office workers who make the sidewalk bloom; a New York City School that created a scented garden for the visually impaired; a North Carolina garden that devotes its entire harvest to those in need; and other stories of communities that are transforming the lives and health of their citizens.   In American Grown, Mrs. Obama tells the story of the White House Kitchen Garden, celebrates the bounty of gardens across our nation, and reminds us all of what we can grow together.

    What defines her work is her skill with plants and her ability to create a garden that responds to the history of the site and the wider landscape. The gardens Jinny creates are as different as their owners and their locations. In this book, Jinny shares her insight into the creative process she has developed while designing more than 250 gardens around the world. The Thoughtful Gardener contains modern takes on traditional forms, and is split into six sections: seeing, understanding, structuring, harmonising, rooting, and liberating. All of Jinny's gardens share a commitment to beautiful craftsmanship and considered planting. Structure and detail are important, and receive close attention. The styles vary considerably – logical, calm, beautiful, romantic, naturalistic, formal, sometimes spare – but the principles remain firm. Jinny designs for the long term, with consideration for the environment; these gardens are built to last.Reflecting Jinny‘s highly individual character, there is plenty of wit and quirkiness alongside the expert knowledge, and it will appeal to the widest audience of garden lovers. Thoughtful and beautiful, yet practical and informative, this book marries artistry with functionality.

    You (and your bees) will be buzzing with delight.From picking the right hive and bringing your bees home to surviving winter and collecting honey, experienced beekeeper Amber Bradshaw takes you on an easy-to-follow journey through your first year of beekeeping and beyond.Beekeeping for Beginners includes: Just the essentials—Learn everything you need to know to begin your first colony—written with brand new beekeepers in mind. Modern beekeeping—Start your colony off right with guides that feature the newest practices and current, natural approaches. Learn to speak bee—Clearly defined terms and a complete glossary will have you talking like a pro beekeeper in no time. Begin your beekeeping the right way—and avoid getting stung by mistakes—with Beekeeping for Beginners.

    Do you want to know how to grow your own food? Or how to keep bees? How to forage for edible seaweed along the shoreline, or wild greens down by the stream? Maybe you're curious about growing mushrooms or how to grow the perfect tomato. You're invited to make these skills your own. Designed to be read with a pot of tea by your elbow and a notebook beside you, Milkwood is all you need to start living a more home-grown life. From DIY projects to wild fermented recipes, the in-depth knowledge and hands-on instruction contained in these pages will have your whole family fascinated and inspired to get growing, keeping, cooking and making. Milkwood is the name of Kirsten Bradley and Nick Ritar's first farm as well as their school where anyone can learn skills for down-to-earth living. Kirsten, Nick and a team of educators offer courses on topics contained in this book as well as permaculture design, natural building and much more. Kirsten and Nick live on a small regenerative farm near Daylesford, Australia, where many things from the sprouted grain they feed their chickens to ingredients that make up dinner is homegrown.

    Ruth Kassinger’s wonderful story of the unique way she chose to cope with the profound changes in her life—a book that will delight readers of Eat, Pray, Love and I Feel Bad About My Neck—is interwoven with the fascinating history of conservatories from the Renaissance orangeries to the glass palaces of Kew.

    Garden expert Jessica Walliser also offers strategies for dealing with the new bugs in town, those worrisome strangers that are starting to show up as a result of climate change. Thirty-six bugs, presented in full color on laminated stock, with concealed wire binding. Sturdy enough to take into the garden for easy reference.