Best Shade Gardening

Fully revised and updated with the best new cultivars The lush, sculptural hosta is loved by gardeners for its ability to both combine well with other plants and project a strong presence when planted alone. “This well-illustrated encyclopedia contains color photographs of over 750 of the finest hosta varieties.

“This is a fascinating books for anyone wanting to truly broaden the range of plants they grow.” — Gardens Illustrated Moss is an extraordinary plant—it grows without roots, flowers, or stems. “[An] informative guide to a unique style of gardening.” — Publishers Weekly “The author flawlessly blends botanical descriptions and artistic sensibilities so that evocative summaries, accompanied by vivid photos, help readers understand the tactile and visual delights of moss, as well as its environmental benefits. “Comprehensive, inspirational, and full of information, this is a fascinating books for anyone wanting to truly broaden the range of plants they grow…a very useful guide.” — Gardens Illustrated. “Instead of eradicating this deer-resistant, pest-resistant, rootless, stemless wonder of a plant, Martin tells us how to encourage and cultivate it…Seeing these hushed and serene gardens makes me hope our climate continues to oblige in future summers.” — Pacific Northwest Magazine.

It includes a survey of gorgeous rock gardens from around the world, the techniques and methods specific to creating and maintaining a rock garden, and profiles of the top 50 rock garden plants. There are sound, practical ideas and instructions to enable you to build your own rock garden.” —Rod Leeds, Alpine Garden Society and Royal Horticultural Society lecturer and judge. “Horticulturist and plant breeder Tychonievich offers a fresh perspective on traditional rock gardening. “The book profiles 10 stunning rock gardens with scads of gorgeous photos. this is the perfect book to get started.” — Garden Design. “ Rock Gardening is a new look at a classic style, and if you’re not quite sure what to do with that rocky part of your property, it may offer an elegant and beautiful solution. Rock gardens have the potential to be sustainable and low-maintenance while still providing great color and texture. For gardeners looking for an introduction to rock gardening, Tychonievich’s book is a great start.” — NYBG's Plant Talk. “Everything you could want to know about this subject including behind-the-scenes technical direction at renowned botanical gardens, humble “rockeries,” and hypertufa trough gardens is here. This is a book for amateurs as well as professionals interested in an educational look at this precise kind of gardening, and it is all delivered with colorful photographs and in Tychonievich’s enlightening, instructive prose.” — Country Gardens. The experienced author succeeds in succinctly communicating his enthusiasm for this garden style. Most helpfully, conceivable requirements for establishing a rock garden are given careful consideration. The experienced author succeeds in succinctly communicating his enthusiasm for this garden style. Most helpfully, conceivable requirements for establishing a rock garden are given careful consideration. This book is perfect for someone relatively new to alpine gardening, no matter which side of the Atlantic they live on.” — Gardens Illustrated.

Detailed insights on grafting, planting, pruning, and choosing the right varieties for your climate are also included, along with a step-by-step instructional calendar to guide growers through the entire orchard year. Phillips completely changed the conversation about healthy orcharding with his first bestselling book, The Apple Grower , and now he takes that dialogue even further, drawing connections between home orcharding and permaculture; the importance of native pollinators; the world of understory plantings with shade-tolerant berry bushes and other insectary plants; detailed information on cover crops and biodiversity; and the newest research on safe, homegrown solutions to pest and disease challenges. For fruit lovers wanting to tend an orchard on a small scale, Phillips, author of the gardening best-seller The Apple Grower (2005), offers a wealth of tips and tricks here on growing berries and tree fruits without resorting to toxic sprays. Phillips also provides an exhaustive directory of fruit varieties, from pome fruits, such as apples and pears, to stone fruits, such as cherries and nectarines. The author presents a challenge to backyard fruit growers and community orchardists to produce healthy, quality fruits organically. The author addresses the challenges of dealing with disease and insect and animal pests along with the need to accommodate trees' annual needs for nutrients; he uses approaches that seek to promote within orchards a diversity of beneficial organisms as well as methods that promote the plant's immunological response via phytoalexins. As a farmer in northern New Hampshire, and author of The Apple Grower, he provides gentle-but-sure advice on holistic orchards in a way that’s encouraging and valuable. For those moving to the next level of orchard management, Phillips delves into the specifics of three major categories of fruits: pome, which includes apples and pears; stone, which encompasses cherry, peach, plum, and apricot; and woody berries, including blackberry, currant, gooseberry, and raspberry. The author of the classic guide for small-scale fruit cultivation, The Apple Grower , returns to the orchard. He then examines the latest scientific knowledge of apple pests and their life cycles to produce a thorough guide to growing wonderful, delicious varieties of apples in an orchard that is safe for animals, birds, and children playing under its tree branches. "Rooted in the author's many years of organic orcharding experience, this book blends ideas from soil science, holistic health, permaculture, and traditional fruit growing into a powerful new approach to orchard design and care. The author has woven multiple strands of orchard knowledge -- based on his expansive vision and a lifetime of experience, together with the wisdom of researchers and fellow fruit growers -- into a brilliant web that captures the wonderful complexity of the orchard ecosystem. Phillips' orchard philosophy- learned from keen observation and reflection- will fall and clobber you like a giant Newtonian apple; then, your walk through the orchard will never be the same. Michael Phillips has led the effort to show that the truly sustainable, organic orchard is something we all can have.

By eschewing jargon and overly technical language, the authors make the benefits of cultivating the soil food web available to a wide audience, from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals. “Digs into soil in a most enlightening and entertaining way.” — Dallas Morning News. “The authors have given gardeners an inside scoop on the scientific research supporting organic gardening.” — Pacific Horticulture. A brief, clear overview of scientific information with which every gardener should be familiar.” — Monterey Herald. “Sure, it’s a gardening book, but it has all the drama and suspense of an extraterrestrial thriller. In Teaming with Microbes Lowenfels and Lewis reveal the new research in the most practical and accessible way.” — The Oregonian. “It takes readers underground to meet the critters that live if you let them under the garden.” — Rockland Courier-Gazette.

A colorful guide covering the basics of replacing a traditional lawn with a wide variety of easy-care, no-mow, drought-tolerant, money-saving options that will appeal to today's busy, eco-conscious homeowner. will inspire you to turn your front yard from lawn into luscious.”. -Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants and Flower Confidential “This thoughtful, inviting, and thoroughly useful book should be required for every new homeowner at closing. Thanks to this book, lawn mowers may become early-21st-century artifacts our grandkids puzzle over.”. -Debra Lee Baldwin, author of Designing with Succulents “With Lawn Gone! A great resource for anyone considering giving up the lawn in favor of something more interesting and dynamic.”. -Scott Calhoun, author of Yard Full of Sun , The Hot Garden , and The Gardener’s Guide to Cactus “An excellent go-to book for anyone wanting to downsize and/or eliminate their lawn (a topic in which interest will continue to grow).

With 500 pages of full color photos and illustrations, the book delivers all the basics that a novice grower needs, as well as scientific research for the experienced gardener. All aspects of cultivation are covered, from the selection of varieties, setting up of the garden, and through each stage of plant growth all the way to harvesting. Ed Rosenthal has been teaching for more than 30 years.

Aquaponics is a revolutionary system for growing plants by fertilizing them with the waste water from fish in a sustainable closed system. Starting with an overview of the theory, benefits, and potential of aquaponics, the book goes on to explain: System location considerations and hardware components The living elements--fish, plants, bacteria, and worms Putting it all together--starting and maintaining a healthy system. This isn't just another book for dummies; this is a comprehensive handbook on how to grow real food...so meticulously documented, that failure is not an option. I have always wanted to put my money where my mouth is and figure out how to do sustainable aquaculture in the context of my home garden. Now the thousands of people who are discovering aquaponics every day have a resource for moving from the dream to the step-by-step reality of raising fish and food in their homes, yards, and even businesses. --John Thompson Sr. VP Sales and Marketing (and Basement and Backyard Aquaponist) AeroGrow International, Inc.

Ed Smith's W-O-R-D system has helped countless gardeners grow an abundance of vegetables and herbs. Everything you loved about the first edition of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible is still here: friendly, accessible language; full-color photography; comprehensive vegetable specific information in the A-to-Z section; ahead-of-its-time commitment to organic methods; and much more. New to this edition is coverage of 15 additional vegetables, including an expanded section on salad greens and more European and Asian vegetables. Readers will also find growing information on more fruits and herbs, new cultivar photographs in many vegetable entries, and a much-requested section on extending the season into the winter months. The impulse to grow vegetables is even stronger in 2009 than it was in 2000, when Storey published The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible . clearly explains everything novice and experienced gardeners need to know to grow vegetables and herbs. Edward C. Smith is the best-selling author of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible and The Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible.

Jack Herer has updated his authoritative history of hemp's myriad uses and of the war on this plant, just as it has become high-profile news, with supporters such as Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson.

Provides all your DIY ideas for styling and tips on how to plant Inspiration for seasoned plant lovers as well as beginners, providing the total package on the topic of living with plants. She is a steady companion for the plant- community Urban Jungle Bloggers and hopes to inspire others with her love for all things green.

With photography commissioned for the book, and including rarely seen archival drawings that shed light on Brown’s process, this book serves as a guide to Britain’s most beloved landscapes and an exploration of the masterful mind behind their creation. "In an impressive and gorgeous volume, CAPABILITY BROWN: Designing the English Landscape (Rizzoli, $65), the renowned garden historian John Phibbs argues that Brown created a great art form that, “at its best, was consciously intended to go unnoticed.” It’s no surprise, then, that he became known as 'the Shakespeare of Gardening.'". .the gardens of Blenheim and Chatsworth come to life in Capability Brown: Designing the English Landscape (Rizzoli)." These images celebrate the soft English light while capturing the natural, parkland beauty of Brown’s designs. — StyleSaloniste.com "Praised for his organic gardens and parklands, British landscape designer Capability Brown takes top billing in this eponymous hardcover by historian John Phibbs. The text, published to commemorate Brown’s 300th birthday, illuminates 15 of his grandest designs through vivid photography and rare archival drawings."

Succulents are hot. "In her new book, Succulents Simplified:Growing, Designing, and Crafting with 100 Easy-Care Varieties , Baldwin even tells of a Jade plant that has lasted for more than two decades in her garden with various stages of neglect! "Anyone who knows Debra Lee Baldwin is aware of her extraordinary prowess as an author, writer, photographer, and artist...her book, Succulents Simplified , is a work of art." From quick and easy succulent rosettes for bouquets, to teeny tiny mint-tin gardens, to succulent-topped pumpkins there's a project in this book for even the most craft-challenged."

This comprehensive guide to homesteading provides all the information you need to grow and preserve a sustainable harvest of grains and vegetables; raise animals for meat, eggs, and dairy; and keep honey bees for your sweeter days. Its 368 pages of information on creating a successful, self sufficient, backyard homestead that will keep you and your family busy and eating all year long. ( Boston Sunday Globe ). “ The Backyard Homestead is a comprehensive and accessible guide to starting a vegetable garden, raising chickens and cows, canning food, making cheese, and a whole lot more. At warp speed, we’re growing our own hops and making our own beer, planting our own wheat fields, keeping chickens (ho hum), ducks, geese, and turkeys (now we’re talking) and milking goats, butchering lamb, raising rabbits, and grinding sausage.

With 512 full color pages and 1120 full color photographs and illustrations, Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible is the most complete cultivation book available. --Phil Kilv, Editor in Chief, Weed World Magazine, January 2006.

With 512 full color pages and 1120 full color photographs and illustrations, Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible is the most complete cultivation book available. --Phil Kilv, Editor in Chief, Weed World Magazine, January 2006.

Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook , anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm. For those who are ready to graduate beyond coffee-can retail, the incomparable Eliot Coleman is back with THE WINTER HARVEST HANDBOOK: Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses (Chelsea Green, paper, $29.95). Coleman's opus is as much a call to action for town planners to embrace local farms as it is a bible for small farmers. I have been a devotee of Eliot's for years, fully agreeing with his methods for growing in winter, spring, summer, and fall, tasty, nutritious produce with a minimum consumption of fossil fuels. I suspect that's because he writes about not just gardening but about everything that connects to good food and pleasure; a Renaissance man for a new generation, he'll quote Goethe in the same breath as Ghandi, and as a result, you'll dig, weed, eat, think, and live more fully." In chapters covering everything from The Yearly Schedule and Greenhouse Design to Weed Control and Marketing, Coleman tracks his own constant search for perfection, a quality that has led more than one young farmer to exclaim 'I'd follow him anywhere.'. Based on decades of on-farm research, this book is packed with useful ideas, tips and practices that anyone can use in pursuing the increasingly vital dream of local, organic food production using a minimum of precious resources. This is the big question facing the local food movement, and Eliot Coleman, one of America's most innovative farmers, has come up with excellent answers.

Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook , anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm. For those who are ready to graduate beyond coffee-can retail, the incomparable Eliot Coleman is back with THE WINTER HARVEST HANDBOOK: Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses (Chelsea Green, paper, $29.95). Coleman's opus is as much a call to action for town planners to embrace local farms as it is a bible for small farmers. I have been a devotee of Eliot's for years, fully agreeing with his methods for growing in winter, spring, summer, and fall, tasty, nutritious produce with a minimum consumption of fossil fuels. I suspect that's because he writes about not just gardening but about everything that connects to good food and pleasure; a Renaissance man for a new generation, he'll quote Goethe in the same breath as Ghandi, and as a result, you'll dig, weed, eat, think, and live more fully." In chapters covering everything from The Yearly Schedule and Greenhouse Design to Weed Control and Marketing, Coleman tracks his own constant search for perfection, a quality that has led more than one young farmer to exclaim 'I'd follow him anywhere.'. Based on decades of on-farm research, this book is packed with useful ideas, tips and practices that anyone can use in pursuing the increasingly vital dream of local, organic food production using a minimum of precious resources. This is the big question facing the local food movement, and Eliot Coleman, one of America's most innovative farmers, has come up with excellent answers.