Gardening

The international bee crisis is threatening our global food supply, but this user-friendly field guide shows what you can do to help protect our pollinators. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation offers browsable profiles of 100 common flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees that support bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. The recommendations are simple: pick the right plants for pollinators, protect them from pesticides, and provide abundant blooms throughout the growing season by mixing perennials with herbs and annuals! 100 Plants to Feed the Bees will empower homeowners, landscapers, apartment dwellers -- anyone with a scrap of yard or a window box -- to protect our pollinators.

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If readers must reluctantly remove water-guzzling favorites from the garden, they need equally beautiful substitutes! This book is a visual treat that supports the transition to dry gardening by proving that gardeners can have all the gorgeous color and flowers they had in the past using just a fraction of the water.

Maureen Gilmer provides chapters on design categories of plants-flowering shrubs, the ground plain, eye-catching accents, ephemeral flowers, perennials for color, animated plants and fine textures, canopy, and edibles-with profiles for each plant plus background info and top picks lists.

The Colorful Dry Garden is unique because it features only bold plants that are also heavy bloomers despite heat and limited water. It also features more than just Western native plants by including varieties from the world's driest climates.

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The ultimate illustrated guide to growing an aromatherapy garden and using essential herbs and oils for healing and inspiration
This is a life-style book that will appeal to those who use essential oils and herbs for their healing properties and those looking for inspiration and practical tips for creating and cultivating aromatherapy gardens. It is a gift/wish book and an appealing introduction to the aromatherapy garden--both past and present.

There are 7 sections in this lavishly illustrated book: History of the Scented Garden Aromatic Herbs for Health and Cooking Creating a Perfumery and Aromatherapy Fragrant Exotica and Container Plants Secrets from the Still Room Planning an Aromatherapy Garden Aromatherapy Plant Portraits This is the essential home reference book on herbs and oils. It will be embraced by home healers, aromatherapists, and gardening fans around the world.

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Thirteen-year-old Emma Biggs is passionate about gardening and eager to share her passion with other kids!

Gardening with Emma is a kid-to-kid guide to growing healthy food and raising the coolest, most awesome plants while making sure there's plenty of fun. With plants that tickle and make noise, tips for how to grow a flower stand garden, and suggestions for veggies from tiny to colossal, Emma offers a range of original, practical, and entertaining advice and inspiration. She provides lots of useful know-how about soil, sowing, and caring for a garden throughout the seasons, along with ways to make play spaces among the plants. Lively photography and Emma's own writing (with some help from her gardening dad, Steve) capture the authentic creativity of a kid who loves to be outdoors, digging in the dirt.

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2016 Silver Nautilus Book Award Winner for Green Living & Sustainability

Are you facing drought or water shortages? Gardening with Less Water offers simple, inexpensive, low-tech techniques for watering your garden much more efficiently -- using up to 90 percent less water for the same results. With illustrated step-by-step instructions, David Bainbridge shows you how to install buried clay pots and pipes, wicking systems, and other porous containers that deliver water directly to a plant's roots with little to no evaporation. These systems are available at hardware stores and garden centers; are easy to set up and use; and work for garden beds, container gardens, and trees.

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Gardeners can be disappointed by the insipid flavor of the vegetables and fruit that they have so carefully nurtured. The problem, according to botanist James Wong, is that many conventional gardening practices are based on pure myth or faulty science. They create bumper crops at the expense of flavor and nutrition. It doesn't have to be that way.

After trial and error of cutting-edge horticultural techniques and extensive review of more than 2,000 journal papers from around the globe, Wong turns the tables on old-school advice with a radical new system that transforms the flavor and nutrition of homegrown produce.

Grow for Flavor shows the simple steps and innovative methods that yield tasty harvests beyond dreams and, best of all, the methods involve less effort, are strictly organic and can be mastered easily by newbie gardeners. The goal is maximum flavor with minimum labor.

Consider these examples:

Grow for Flavor is more than tips from a gardening expert. It overflows with practical information and inspirational advice -- an essential for all gardeners.

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A comprehensive guide to starting an herb garden, written for beginners

The consummate beginners guide for anyone interested in starting an herb garden. It will explain, in simple terms, everything you need to know about choosing the site, preparing the soil, choosing the plants, caring for them, dealing with pests and diseases, and what to do with the harvest at the end of the summer. Included will be actual easy-to-follow garden plans, lots of helpful tips, expert advice, and useful figures.

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In tune with the popular move toward fresh, local, and homegrown food, The Kitchen Garden lets you get the most from your garden and helps to dramatically reduce the amount you spend on produce at the supermarket. The Kitchen Garden is the perfect companion for gardeners who want to turn their harvest into a meal while also seeking some measure of sustainability.

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The Little Veggie Patch Company is a Melbourne based business that specializes in everything that encompasses the edible garden. From the design, installation and maintenance of home, school and corporate veggie patches, to everything you will need to care for them, they are dedicated to helping people learn the skills of how easy it is to grow their own food and have fun doing so, no matter the space, size or lifestyle. They also pride themselves on creating gardening-related projectsthat use recycled materials in new inspired ways that add a personal element to every corner of your outdoor space.

The Little Veggie Patch DIY Garden Projects includes over 38 of their best projects for those young and old wanting to transform their outdoor living space. It is broken into 6 categories from Kids, Recycled/Upcyled, X-Factor, Vertical Gardening, Gardening basics and Kitchen, and includes a variety of projects for experienced handy folk to quirky ideas that will involve the youngest members of the family. Projects range from the incredibly quick and simple, such as a self-watering milk-carton planter, how to grow micro-herbs and milk-crate planter boxes to large-scale building projects such as making vertical gardens from pallets and how to build an ultimate playhouse from recycled apple crates. Complete with a collection of recipes for what to do with produce in the kitchen truly makes this the ultimate gardeners companion. Written in a personable, approachable style with stories to accompany each project as well as clear step-by-step instructions with colorful photographs to match, The Little Veggie Patch crew will inspire the green-thumb in every reader.

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This is the definitive guide to gardening with native plants on the prairies. Gardening with native plants has lots of advantages, not only for your yard, but also for the ecosystem. What could be better than a beautiful, low-maintenance yard that preserves biodiversity and withstands the prairie climate? Native Plants for the Short Season Yard is the key for western Canadian gardeners wanting to unlock the full potential of native plants.With the wit and wisdom his fans love, Lyndon shares the basics of shopping for, propagating, and designing with native plants. He also shines a light on more than 100 of his favourite native plants, along with tips on how to grow them. Topics include: How to ethically and responsibly grow native plants from seeds and cuttings. Identifying the best plants for sunny, shady, wet, or dry spots in your yard. The plants best left to wild spaces and those you should avoid at all costs. Advice from gardening experts who share their secrets and successes with native plants. Protecting your garden with natural alternatives to herbicides and pesticides.

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Homeowners looking to revitalize their yards will absolutely love the more than 350 innovative design suggestions presented in New Landscaping Ideas that Work. In it, practical design advice is paired with the author's 30+ years of expertise to create a complete do-it-yourself guide and primer for homeowners looking to transform all aspects of their yard into inviting outdoor spaces.

Practical design advice as well as over 350 innovative ideas combine to give homeowners the only sourcebook they'll need to make smart design, buying, and installation decisions.

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