Find Your Next Read!

In this exquisitely detailed naturalist's handbook, Laura C. Martin provides profiles of 85 wild plants and flowers found across North America, each accompanied by lovingly illustrated and charming watercolor paintings. With dozens of notes, arrows, and details, each chapter encourages the reader to look at the plants as a naturalist would--opening up a whole new way of seeing nature. Martin gives details on where the plants can be found, how they grow, how to identify them, and what natural properties they each have. The handbook features plants from across North America, including the Purple Coneflower, found along the East Coast from Quebec to Florida, and the Opuntia (prickly pear) cacti found in Mexico and America's Southwest.

In addition to the wildflower profiles, readers will find information on growing native plants, instructions for plant crafts, tips for conservation, and ideas for activities with children. They'll also discover recipes for teas, herb mixes, tinctures, and salves using the plants described. Crafts and activities include making dyes, simple baskets, wreaths, and crowns. A Naturalist's Book of Wildflowers is a gift book and field guide in one, with its treasure trove of handy information and beautiful colored drawings.

Shrubs are the perfect plant—they are low-maintenance, there is a variety for nearly every need, and they are widely available at garden centers and nurseries. In Shrubs, Andy McIndoe—one of the world’s foremost woody plant experts—offers the information and advice needed to pick the right shrub for every site and condition. With this handy guide, it’s easier than ever to decide which shrubs to add to your home garden. The book includes shrubs for challenging growing conditions, shrubs for restricted planting spaces, and shrubs chosen for their desirable characteristics, including hardiness in shade, difficult soil, and harsh conditions. Each plant profile includes complete growing information, color photographs, and recommended companion plants.

Increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and pest infestations are challenging today’s vegetable gardeners. But best-selling author Niki Jabbour has a solution: Growing Under Cover. In this in-depth guide, Jabbour shows how to use small solutions like cloches, row covers, shade cloth, cold frames, and hoophouses, as well as larger protective structures like greenhouses and polytunnels, to create controlled growing spaces for vegetables to thrive. Photographed in her own super-productive garden, Jabbour highlights the many benefits of using protective covers to plant earlier, eliminate pests, and harvest a healthier, heartier bounty year round. With enthusiasm, inventive techniques, and proven, firsthand knowledge, this book provides invaluable advice from a popular and widely respected gardening authority.

In Complete Container Herb Gardening, herbal guru and certified horticulturist Sue Goetz walks you through the ins and outs of growing these fragrant and flavorful plant treasures in containers.

Herbs are among the easiest edible plants to grow, and when you cultivate your own fresh herbs, you can enjoy their abundant flavors, healing properties, and uses for natural home and beauty every day--plus reap big savings at the grocery store or farmer's market.

Whether you grow on a suburban patio, an urban rooftop, a condo balcony, or on the front porch of your duplex, discovering which herbs grow best in pots, how to select the ideal containers for the job, and how to tend your container herb garden to maximize production (and flavor!) is key to your success.

Highlighted by gorgeous photography, Sue also presents over a dozen container "recipes" for mixing and matching your favorite herbs to create stunning and useful combinations. From the perfect culinary partnerships and natural aromatherapy combos to collections of herbs for natural beauty and chemical-free cleaning products, these herbal arrangements are no-fail and perfectly Instagram-worthy.

Complete Container Herb Gardening is the ideal roadmap for success, even for brand-new gardeners. Learn how to:

• Grow fresh kitchen herbs in small spaces
• Choose the best containers, soil, and tools for herbal success
• Make more herb plants...for free!
• Cultivate unique herbs and spices, like turmeric, saffron, and ginger
• Design herb containers that are both beautiful and highly productive
• Harvest armloads of herbs from a porch or patio
• Tend an indoor herb garden on a windowsill

Friendly, accessible, and packed with practical information, growing herbs has never been easier--even if you have just a small corner of space to spare. Unleash your inner #herbnerd with Complete Container Herb Gardening!

In Grow Your Own Spices, author and spice-growing gardener Tasha Greer hands you everything you need to know to grow a thriving spice garden, with practical tips and in-depth advice on cultivating over 30 different spices.

Unlike herbs, which consist of the green leaves of certain plants, spices come from the seeds, roots, bark, or berries of plants, which means growing, harvesting, and preparing spices is a lot more nuanced than growing leafy herbs. Start with easy-to-grow seed spices first, such as sesame seeds, fennel, and cumin, then graduate to more challenging spice varieties, such as star anise, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Spices not only offer culinary flare, there’s also increasing evidence of their ability to fight inflammation and reduce various health risks. Medical usage tips from expert herbalist Lindsey Feldpausch are found throughout the book and offer well-researched advice on how to use homegrown spices to improve your well-being.

Regardless of whether you’re using spices as a health-boosting supplement or simply to power-up the flavor of your meals, purchasing spices is an expensive proposition. Why pay all that money when you can grow your own organic spices with the easy-to-follow advice found here? 
 
In the pages of Grow Your Own Spices, you’ll learn: 

• How to cultivate your own saffron, the world’s most expensive spice
• The best way to tend tropical spices, like ginger, turmeric, and cardamom, even if you live in a cold climate
• Easy-to-grow spices that are perfect for beginners
• The unique way certain spices, such as wasabi, cloves, and cinnamon, are grown and harvested
• How to cultivate root spices, including horseradish and chicory 
• Tips for harvesting your own capers, mustard, sesame seeds, and even paprika

Let Grow Your Own Spices show you how to spice up your garden, your plate, and your health, with your own fresh, homegrown spices! 

Named one of the Best Gardening Books of 2014 by the Chicago Tribune, Indoor Kitchen Gardening is about creating a sense of play and nourishment. It takes just a few dollars and a few days for you to start enjoying fresh, healthy produce grown indoors in your own home.The Indoor Kitchen Gardening Handbook is a more compact, giftable edition of the original book and offers tons of great growing information in a smaller package.

Imagine serving a home-cooked meal highlighted with beet, arugula, and broccoli microgreens grown right in your kitchen, accompanied by sautéed winecap mushrooms grown in a box of sawdust in your basement. If you have never tasted microgreens, all you really need to do is envision all the flavor of an entire vegetable plant concentrated into a single tantalizing seedling. If you respond to the notion of nourishing your family and guests with amazing, fresh, organic produce that you've grown in your own house, condo, apartment, basement, or sunny downtown office, then you'll love exploring the expansive new world of growing and eating that can be discovered with the help of the Indoor Kitchen Gardening Handbook.

Inside, author and Bossy Acres Farm CSA co-owner Elizabeth Millard teaches you how to grow microgreens, sprouts, herbs, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, and more--all inside your own home, where you won't have to worry about seasonal changes or weather conditions. Filled with mouthwatering photography and more than 200 pages of do-it-yourself in-home gardening information and projects, Indoor Kitchen Gardening Handbook is your gateway to this exciting new growing method--not just for garnishes or relishes, but for wholesome, nutritious, organic edibles that will satisfy your appetite as much as your palate.

There's a certain thrill that comes from growing your own food, and if you're wearing your pajamas while you do it, that excitement can feel doubled. Easy growing projects, with a few challenging ones tossed into the mix, make indoor gardening a fun journey, not a daunting task. It doesn't matter if you want to grow your own food indoors in an urban apartment or in a rural farmhouse, anyone can use the techniques found here to grow a garden abundance--indoors! Let the year-round food growing adventure begin.
 

Grow, raise, and store your own food with this simple and easy guide to creating a self-sustaining farm right in your backyard!

These days we are all looking for ways to become more self-sufficient. Now with Backyard Farming you can create your very own micro farm right in your backyard—no matter where you live! Now you can discover ways to grow, raise, and store your own food year round whether you live in an urban environment, in the suburbs, or out in the country. From raising chickens and beekeeping to growing vegetables and planting fruit trees, this guide to homesteading will help you become more self-reliant in no time!

Companion planting has a long history of use by gardeners, but the explanation of why it works has been filled with folklore and conjecture. Plant Partners delivers a research-based rationale for this ever-popular growing technique, offering dozens of ways you can use scientifically tested plant partnerships to benefit your whole garden. Through an enhanced understanding of how plants interact with and influence each other, this guide suggests specific plant combinations that improve soil health and weed control, decrease pest damage, and increase biodiversity, resulting in real and measurable impacts in the garden.

Recipes, DIY projects, and inspiration for a beautiful and low-waste life, from the creator of @simply.living.well on Instagram

In this timely and motivational guide, author Julia Watkins shares rituals, recipes, and projects for living simply and sustainably at home. For every area of your household--kitchen, cleaning, wellness, bath, and garden--Julia shows you how to eliminate wasteful packaging, harmful ingredients, and disposable items. Practical checklists outline easy swaps (instead of disposable sponges, opt for biodegradable sponges or Swedish dishcloths; choose a bamboo toothbrush over a plastic one) and sustainable upgrades for common household tools and products. Projects include scrap apple cider vinegar, wool dryer balls, kitchen bowl covers and cloth produce bags, non-toxic dryer sheets, all-purpose citrus cleaner, herbal tinctures and balms, and more, plus recipes for package-free essentials like homemade nut milk, hummus, ketchup, salad dressings, and veggie stock.

Dozens of tips and tricks to remove troublesome animals from your yard and garden!
Deer, rabbits, and raccoons, among a dozen other mammals, are a constant plague to the homeowner, whether they devour the plants in the vegetable garden or chew up the landscaping in your yard. Replacing and replanting these plants can be expensive and the average person doesn’t have time to deal with the extra spending and stress. But with Deer-Resistant Landscaping, you can worry no more! You’ll learn the proven strategies needed to repel and combat deer, chipmunks, skunks, squirrels, and more. Included are features such as:

• Strategies for every season and every size pest
• Interviews and tips from regional gardening and wildlife control experts from coast to coast
• Encyclopedic coverage of more than one thousand resistant plants, especially those least likely to be destroyed by deer
• Over four hundred stunning, full-color wildlife photographs, including some by legendary naturalist Dr. Leonard Lee Rue III

All the information in this handy guide is based on scientific studies from gardening and pest control authorities across the country. Easy-to-understand instructions and beautiful photographs highlight solutions and deterrents for even the most stubborn mammals. From simple, low-cost home remedies, scare tactics, and deterrents to live trapping, barriers, and community action procedures suitable for more intense problems, this tip-filled handbook will have your home and garden pest-free in no time!
 

Elevate your backyard veggie patch into a work of sophisticated and stylish art. Kitchen Garden Revival guides you through every aspect of kitchen gardening, from design to harvesting—with expert advice from author Nicole Johnsey Burke, founder of Rooted Garden, one of the leading US culinary landscape companies, and Gardenary, an online kitchen gardening education and resource company.

Participating in the grow-your-own movement is important to both reduce your food miles and control what makes it onto your family’s table. If you’ve hesitated to take part because installing and caring for a traditional vegetable garden doesn’t seem to suit your life or your sense of style, Kitchen Garden Revival is here to show you there’s a better, more beautiful way to grow food.

Instead of row after row of cabbage and pepper plants plunked into a patch of dirt in the middle of the yard, kitchen gardens are attractive, highly tailored food gardens consisting of easy-to-maintain raised planting beds laid out in an organized geometric pattern. Offering both four seasons of ornamental interest and plenty of fresh, homegrown fruits, vegetables, and herbs, kitchen gardens are the way to grow your own food in a fashionable, modern, and practical way.

Kitchen gardens were once popular features of the European and early American landscape, but they fell out of favor when our agrarian roots were displaced by industrialization. With this accessible and inspirational guide, Nicole aims to return the kitchen garden to its rightful place just outside of every backdoor.

Learn the art of kitchen gardening as you discover: 

• What characteristics all kitchen gardens have in common
• How to design and install gorgeous kitchen garden beds using metal, wood, or stone
• Why raised beds mean reduced maintenance
• What crops are best for your kitchen garden 
• A planting, tending, and harvesting plan developed by a pro
• Season-by-season growing guides 

It's time to join the Kitchen Garden Revival and start growing your own delicious, organic food. 

Where does our food come from? What role do farms play? What’s it like to be a farmer? In this charmingly illustrated book, follow a farm throughout the year to discover how the farmer grows fresh and tasty food for us to eat in a sustainable and natural way.

Explore the workings of a small-scale, organic family farm and experience the rhythm of farm life. In the spring, visit the chicken coop, till the fields, and tour the farm machinery. When summer comes, plant corn, meet the pollinators, and head to the county fair. In the fall, make pies and preserves, harvest pumpkins, and put the fields to sleep. Winter activities include trimming and pruning the orchard, seed shopping, and baking bread.

To conclude your year on the farm, learn what you can do to support the farmers who pick our carrots and raise the cows for our milk. A glossary defines key sustainable farming terms.

Through this colorful and intimate look at life on a small-scale farm, children will learn not only how the farm feeds us, but how the farmer must feed and care for the farm.

The ultimate organic gardening resource, Gardening for Geeks provides readers with everything they need to know about designing, building, and sustaining their own garden. Filled with step-by-step processes, helpful diagrams, and expert tips on the best practices, this book covers it all for anyone who dreams of gardening, even the city dweller. Starting off with the basics and progressing into more advanced concepts for a wide scope of gardening strategies and techniques, this is a comprehensive and geeky look at your favorite hobby. Founder of Gardenerd and author, Christy Wilhelmi shares her expertise to break down the biology and ecology of gardening in an easy, breezy writing style that will make you appreciate and understand gardening even more than you did before!

Expert planting advice for growing fruit and vegetables in pots from the acclaimed English garden - with 50 delicious recipes

Beautifully illustrated, Grow Fruit & Vegetables in Pots provides clear, practical information on growing fruit and vegetables in containers, whether that be a window box or a terracotta pot on a balcony. Aaron Bertelsen of the acclaimed English garden at Great Dixter will guide you through what to grow, which pots to use, give personal tips on varieties to choose, and advice on cultivation and care. Featuring more than 50 delicious recipes, Bertelsen shows that lack of space is no barrier to growing what you want to eat, and proves that harvesting and cooking food you have grown yourself is a total pleasure, with dishes that showcase a few perfectly chosen - and personally grown - ingredients.

In this second book in the internationally successful No-Waste Gardening series, learn how to recycle and repurpose your way to a successful, productive, and eco-friendly organic garden! 

In No-Waste Organic Gardening, author Shawna Coronado guides you toward a more sustainable landscape with dozens of tips, tricks, and solutions that save you time and money—all while saving the planet, too! A revision of Shawna's previous title,101 Organic Gardening Hacks, this new book tackles waste-reducing gardening in a clever, accessible way. 

Learn how to:

• Upcycle household discards to grow seedlings
• Turn yard debris into “black gold” in a DIY compost bin
• Control pests with traps made from household discards
• Build a rain barrel from an old trash can
• Mix up your own potting soil to reduce plastic bag waste
• Protect spring plantings with repurposed jugs, jars, and containers
• Build a new raised bed with everyday items—no power tools required! 

Plus, you’ll find solutions to common garden problems and plenty of innovative and resourceful ways to reduce your outgoing waste. Conquering the increasingly important art of responsible gardening is a whole lot easier than you might think, with help from No-Waste Organic Gardening. For more advice on living waste-free, explore the first book in the No-Waste Gardening series, No-Waste Kitchen Gardening.