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Bloom

Lisa Eldred Steinkopf

If you’ve ever struggled to get an orchid or African violet to rebloom, or if you’ve hesitated to add plants like hoya, anthurium, Madagascar jasmine, or clivia to your windowsill for fear you may never see their gorgeous flowers, Lisa reveals the insider strategies you need to encourage these plants to strut their stuff. In her signature warm and beginner-friendly tone, she introduces simple techniques you can use to encourage bloom alongside all the ins and outs of caring for these beautiful plants. Lush, full-color photography accompanies each in-depth plant profile. 

Upping your houseplant game doesn’t have to involve spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the next trendy leafy-green foliage plant. If you want to expand both your growing skills and the number of specimens in your houseplant family, dive into the world of flowering houseplants instead. New cultivars of old favorites are taking the houseplant world by storm, and other, more unusual, species are now making their way into the limelight, thanks to the interest of millions of new houseplant parents around the world.

Inside the pages of Bloom, you’ll meet:
 

  • The best flowering houseplants to cascade from window ledges, hanging pots, and plant shelves
  • A collection of small blooming houseplants perfect for tabletops, desks, and windowsills
  • Houseplants with colorful blooms for the living room, dining room, and bedroom
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The First-Time Gardener: Growing Plants and Flowers

Sean McManus

There are no stupid questions here. Everyone has to start somewhere, after all. In The First-Time Gardener: Growing Plants and Flowers, Sean and Allison McManus, the gardening pros behind the popular website and podcast Spoken Garden, answer all of your questions and more.

Caring for outdoor plantings can be intimidating, especially if the process is completely new to you. Before running to the hardware store to stock up on plastic bags of mulch and tools you don’t really need, arm yourself with the know-how to plant and tend outdoor areas correctly and safely. Doing so saves you time, money, and energy—and helps make the process a whole lot more fun!

With help from this easy-to-follow beginner gardening guide, you’ll learn:

  • Tips for selecting the best plants and flowers for your growing conditions 
  • The best planting techniques for different types of plants
  • How to mulch trees, shrubs, and garden beds correctly 
  • Pruning dos and don’ts for common garden plants
  • Ways to keep weeds out of outdoor areas—without using synthetic herbicides
  • How to recognize and manage different pests and diseases naturally
  • Insider tips on everything from the difference between annuals and perennials to choosing the best organic fertilizer
  • Plus, you’ll find time-management advice and tips for effective, resource-conscious gardening

You will close the book not only knowing how to care for your home's outdoor plantings using earth-friendly methods, but also knowing the satisfaction of a beautiful, all-natural landscape.

This book is part of The First-Time Gardener's Guides series from Cool Springs Press, which also includes The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables. Each book in The First-Time Gardener's Guides series is aimed at beginner gardeners and offers clear, fact-based information that's presented in a friendly and accessible way, including step-by-step instructions and full-color illustrations throughout.  

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Better Homes & Gardens Perennial Gardening

Better Homes & Gardens

Perennials are permanent fixtures in most home gardens, making this complete guide a perfect fit for any home gardener's library. This book will be a comprehensive and accessible reference for planning, planting, and caring for the most popular perennial plants, from the common hibiscus and peony, to new, must-grow varieties. With an easy-to-navigate package, in-depth coverage of basic techniques, and up-to-date information on new varieties and trends, it is perfect for gardeners of all skill levels, from novice to expert.

  • Filled with colorful diagrams, helpful checklists that make shopping and planning a breeze, and easy-to-follow directions for all kinds of projects, it's the perfect guide to planning and maintaining a beautiful home garden, year after year.
  • Chapters will include a primer on understanding perennials, guidance on selecting the best perennials for your region and situation, inspirational ideas for design, including color combinations and plant pairings.
  • An entire chapter of plant-by-numbers plans will provide step-by-step guidance and inspiration for home garden designs.
  • Special features include lists of top perennial plants and at-a-glance seasonal maintenance charts.
  • More than 700 gorgeous color photos throughout, including a plant encyclopedia that features hundreds of perennials, categorized for convenience.
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Edible Flowers

Cathy Wilkinson Barash

Barash provides general gardening advice including detailed background and culture information for each of the 67 flowers featured in her book, and showcases 280 recipes using edible flowers from herbs, ornamentals, and vegetables. Highlights include recipes from 12 top chefs in the US and Canada. Photos.

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Seed Sowing and Saving

Carole B. Turner

Those pricey transplants set out on display every spring are so tempting with their leafy faces pleading, "take me home!"  But beware, you never know where those seedlings have been - Crammed in a pest-infested greenhouse?  Packed for days in a sweltering truck?

Start your plants from seeds and you know that's your precious vegetable, herb, or flower has been nurtured with tender loving care every day of its life.  And better yet, when you harvest seeds for next year's crop, you'll get even more plants absolutely FREE!

In this book you'll find everything you need to know to successfully harvest seeds from more than 100 common vegetables, annuals, perennials, herbs, and wildflowers, then dry and store them for maximum viability. You'll also learn how to start seeds indoors to get a jump start on the season, and to prepare your soil beds for planting.

 

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Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers

Erin Benzakein

Learn how to buy, style, and present seasonal flower arrangements for every occasion.

With sections on tools, flower care, and design techniques, Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers presents all the secrets to arranging garden-fresh bouquets.

Featuring expert advice from Erin Benzakein, world-renowned flower farmer, floral designer, and bestselling author of Floret Farm: Cut Flower Garden, this book is a gorgeous and comprehensive guide to everything you need to make your own incredible arrangements all year long, whether harvesting flowers from the backyard or shopping for blooms at the market.

• Includes an A–Z flower guide with photos and care tips for more than 200 varieties.
• Simple-to-follow advice on flower care, material selection, and essential design techniques
• More than 25 how-to projects, including magnificent centerpieces, infinitely giftable posies, festive wreaths, and breathtaking bridal bouquets

Floret Farm's A Year in Flowers offers advice on every phase of working with cut flowers—including gardening, buying, caring for, and arranging fresh flowers.

Brimming with indispensable tips and hundreds of vibrant photographs, this book is an invitation to live a flower-filled life and perfect for anyone who loves flowers.

• The definitive guide to flower arranging from the biggest star in the farm-to-centerpiece movement
• Perfect for flower lovers, avid and novice gardeners, floral designers, wedding planners, florists, small farmers, stylists, designers, crafters, and those passionate about the local floral movement
• For those who loved Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden by Erin Benzakein, The Flower Recipe Book by Alethea Harampolis, Seasonal Flower Arranging by Ariella Chezar, and The Flower Chef by Carly Cylinder

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Martha's Flowers, Deluxe Edition

Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart's lifelong love of flowers began at a young age, as she dug in and planted alongside her father in their family garden, growing healthy, beautiful blooms, every year. The indispensable lessons she learned then--and those she has since picked up from master gardeners--form the best practices she applies to her voluminous flower gardens today. For the first time, she compiles the wisdom of a lifetime spent gardening into a practical yet inspired book. Learn how and when to plant, nurture, and at the perfect time, cut from your garden. With lush blooms in hand, discover how to build stunning arrangements. Accompanied by beautiful photographs of displays in Martha's home, bursting with ideas, and covering every step from seed to vase, Martha's Flowers is a must-have handbook for flower gardeners and enthusiasts of all skill levels.

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Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden

Erin Benzakein

The Cut Flower Garden: Erin Benzakein is a florist-farmer, leader in the locaflor farm-to-centerpiece movement, and owner of internationally renowned Floret Flower Farm in Washington's lush Skagit Valley.

A stunning flower book: This beautiful guide to growing, harvesting, and arranging gorgeous blooms year-round provides readers with vital tools to nurture a stunning flower garden and use their blossoms to create show-stopping arrangements.

Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden: Cut Flower Garden is equal parts instruction and inspiration—a book overflowing with lush photography of magnificent flowers and breathtaking arrangements organized by season. Find inspiration in this lush flower book:

  • Irresistible photos of Erin's flower farm that showcase exquisite blooms
  • Tips for growing in a variety of spaces and climates
  • Step-by-step instructions for lavish garlands, airy centerpieces, and romantic floral décor for every season
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The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide

Jenny Rose Carey

The colors, shapes, and scents of flowers are as ravishing to the senses as to the soul. But it’s all too easy get things wrong: colors that clash, flowers that bloom at the wrong time, plants that fail to thrive. Enter The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide by expert gardener Jenny Rose Carey. She tells you exactly how to get started, how to combine plants for the most spectacular effects, and how to keep your garden going from year to year. Whether you’re interested in dramatic color combinations, how best to use a favorite flower, or how to create a garden for a specific purpose, such as nourishing pollinators, you’ll find the answers in this friendly, information-packed book. As Jenny herself says, “Don’t be afraid—just have a go!”

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Successful Container Gardening

Joseph Provey

This book describes the advantages to container gardening in words and pictures. It includes more than 300 color photos and 20 illustrations, along with advice for choosing the right container and soil medium; dozens of plant-specific "recipes" for container gardens of flowers, vegetables, shrubs, and trees categorized by sunlight requirements; strategies for irrigation; expert tips for disease and pest prevention; and foolproof instructions for pruning, pinching, and bedding.

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The Flower Gardener's Bible

Lewis Hill

Create the flower garden of your dreams. This comprehensive guide includes expert advice on everything from choosing an appropriate growing site to maximizing the lifespan of your plants. Charming illustrations and photographs accompany helpful tips on how to improve soil, fight off pests, and make all your flowers bloom with radiant color. Whether you’re a beginning gardener or a seasoned florist, The Flower Gardener’s Bible is a useful resource that will help you keep your garden healthy and beautiful for years to come. 
 

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The Sustainable Vegetable Garden

John Jeavons

From the author of our best-selling and widely beloved HOW TO GROW MORE VEGETABLES comes this "quick and dirty" introduction to biointensive gardening that shows it is not only possible but easy to grow astonishing crops of healthful organic vegetables and fruits, while conserving resources and actually helping the soil.

A revolutionary approach to feeding ourselves and nurturing the land, this book includes:

- Step-by-step illustrations and instructions that make these techniques simple for even the novice gardener.

- Everything you need to know about planning crops, composting, harvesting, and more.

- Complete resources for seeds, tools, and other garden supplies.Feed a family of four on the bounty of your backyard, or just get more out of your garden with less effort with this wonderful resource.

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How to Become a Gardener

Ashlie Thomas

Take charge of your family’s food security by learning how to grow your own fruits, vegetables, and herbs—and right along with them, you’ll nurture your own inner strength, too.

Food insecurity affects millions of people worldwide. Without access to well-stocked stores or nutritious, fresh foods, those living in “food deserts” face more hunger and health issues than communities where a diversity of food is plentiful. With the inspiration and knowledge found in How to Become a Gardener, self-reliance and food autonomy are within reach for anyone willing to get a little dirt under their nails and dig in.

Author, health coach, and food security advocate Ashlie Thomas of The Mocha Gardener (@the.mocha.gardener) serves as an experienced and encouraging guide on your journey toward self-empowerment through the cultivation of your own homegrown harvests. With a spirit of respect for others, for nature, and for community, Ashlie walks you step by step through not only the practical ins and outs of gardening—from seed starting to making the harvest—but also through the personal challenges and lessons found within the act of gardening itself. Regardless of whether you only have space to grow in a few pots or you have enough room for multiple raised beds or an in-ground garden, you’ll find freedom and wellnessthrough the food you grow, along with patience, compassion, and perspective.

How to Become a Gardener focuses on:

  • What makes a space a garden and how to get one started 
  • How gardens can be a symbol of resilience in challenging times 
  • Finding what motivates you to grow and using it to cultivate nutrient-dense, homegrown harvests 
  • Why reclaiming your food authority is one of the most empowering things you can do for you and your family 
  • The importance of finding personal freedom by growing your own garden-to-table food
  • How the garden grows you just as much as you grow the garden

How to Become a Gardener is about growing food, yes. But it’s also about finding your strength through gardening, reclaiming your food authority, discovering your motivation, and learning that no matter what your garden yields,it’s always worth the wait.

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The Frugal Gardener

Catriona T. Erler

With warmth, wit, and detail, garden guru Catriona Tudor Erler teaches you which tools you need for essential garden jobs, how to help hoses find the "fountain of youth", whether to repair, replace or rent equipment, and hundreds more thrifty lessons. "What Will You Save?" and "25 Smart Shopping Tips" sidebars put frugal facts right at readers' green thumbs. Whether you are planting a perennial border or pumpkin patch, this resource will help you spend little and grow a lot!

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The Uninhabitable Earth

David Wallace-Wells

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.

An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.

The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s.

 

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Wildly Successful Farming

Brian DeVore

Wildly Successful Farming tells the stories of farmers across the American Midwest who are balancing profitability and food production with environmental sustainability and a passion for all things wild. They are using innovative techniques and strategies to develop their "wildly" successful farms as working ecosystems. Whether producing grain, vegetables, fruit, meat, or milk, these next-generation agrarians look beyond the bottom line of the spreadsheet to the biological activity on the land as key measures of success.

Written by agricultural journalist Brian DeVore, the book is based on interviews he has conducted at farms, wildlife refuges, laboratories, test plots, and gardens over the past twenty-five years. He documents innovations in cover cropping, managed rotational grazing, perennial polyculture, and integrated pest management. His accounts provide insight into the impacts regenerative farming methods can have on wildlife, water, landscape, soils, and rural communities and suggest ways all of us can support wildly successful farmers.

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The Autopilot Garden

Luke Marion

Train your garden to practically grow itself with this new guide from YouTube gardening sensations Luke and Sindy Marion, founders of MIGardener. Instead of slaving away year after year, work smarter (not harder) by strategizing to help your garden become self-sufficient. Learn to break down traditional thinking and implement systems that will save time, hassle, weeding, water, and space wherever you live. Create an organic garden that allows you to enjoy the rest of the season on autopilot.

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Floret Farm's Discovering Dahlias

Erin Benzakein

World-renowned flower farmer and floral designer Erin Benzakein reveals all the secrets to growing, cultivating, and arranging gorgeous dahlias. These coveted floral treasures come in a dazzling range of colors, sizes, and forms, with enough variety for virtually every garden space and personal preference, making them one of the most beloved flowers for arrangements.

In these pages, readers will discover:

* Expert advice for planting, harvesting, and arranging garden-fresh dahlias
* A simple-to-follow overview of the dahlia classification system
* An A-Z guide with photos and descriptions of more than 350 varieties
* Step-by-step how-to's for designing show-stopping dahlia bouquets that elevate any occasion

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The Hidden Histories of Houseplants

Alice Bailey

The Hidden Histories of House Plants explores the world's most common house plants, and their journeys to our homes This book isn't just a dry exploration of historical cultivation; the narrative explores the plants' places in social history, art, politics, fashion and culture, showcasing the most fascinating elements of each plant's story, be it William Morris' palm obsession that continues to be replicated in the 21st century by the likes of Ikea, or how common indoor ferns first made their way to Europe in glass jars for botanical studies, and why these terrariums are now on display in almost everyone's homes. Accompanied by stunning illustrations, each text takes the reader on a journey through time, history and culture, told by the most universally binding objects in our homes from London to Beijing - house plants.

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The Well-Tended Perennial Garden

Tracy DiSabato-Aust

Since its original publication twenty years ago, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has helped home gardeners successfully plan, plant, and tend their gardens. Now Tracy Di-Sabato-Aust’s trusty advice and reassuring tone are back and better than ever in this completely revised new edition. Novice and experienced gardeners alike will benefit from Tracy’s thorough details on the essential practices of perennial care—included deadheading, pinching, and thinning—along with growing information for new species and cultivars, on-trend garden design advice, a monthly planting and maintenance schedule, and details on native plants and gardening for wildlife. The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is a must-have ally in the quest for a beautiful, well-maintained garden. 

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The Green Witch's Garden

Arin Murphy-Hiscock

Create your own enchanting witch’s garden and draw energy from the earth with this guide to cultivating your very own magical ingredients.

A green witch embraces the power of nature, draws energy from the earth and the universe, and relies on stones, plants, flowers, and herbs for healing. In The Green Witch’s Garden, you will learn how to create your own magical space to enhance your witchcraft practice.

With information on how to plan and design your sacred garden and tips and tricks to growing and harvesting magical ingredients, this book will allow you to take control of your practice and more deeply connect with the earth. Let experienced witch and author of The Green Witch Arin Hiscock-Murphy guide you on your path to creating your personal piece of nature.

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The First-time Gardener: Growing Vegetables

Jessica Sowards

Homesteader Jessica Sowards, the warm and energetic host of YouTube’s Roots and Refuge Farm, is the perfect teacher for new gardeners, offering not just know-how but inspiration and time-management tips for success.

Before you sink your hands into the soil, she’ll answer all those questions rolling around inside your head:

  • Where do I put my new garden?
  • How do I prepare the soil?
  • What vegetables should I plant?
  • Is it better to start new plants from seed or should I buy transplants?
  • What about watering, feeding, and taking care of my garden?
  • What do I do if bugs show up?

There are no stupid questions here. Everyone has to start somewhere, after all. Not only will you learn how to prepare, plant, and tend your first vegetable garden, you’ll also learn:

  • How to design an eco-friendly layout
  • How to grow with the seasons
  • How to maximize your harvest, even if you only grow in a small space

Jessica wants your first food-growing experience to be a positive one, and she’s prepared to go the distance to make sure tending the earth becomes your new favorite hobby.
 

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The Complete Gardener

Monty Don

The most comprehensive, practical, and highly illustrated book Monty has ever written, it covers what he believes are the most important aspects of gardening. Organic techniques have always been at the core of his practice, but this new edition picks up on another key principle: the need to provide habitats in your garden for local wildlife.

Over half of the photographs in this new edition will be new, taken over a year in his Long Meadow garden, and he is going through the text with a fine-tooth comb to ensure everything he says reflects his latest approach.

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A Beginner's Guide to Terrarium Gardening

Sueko Katsuji

A Beginner's Guide to Terrariums shows you how to create your own glass container gardens with easy-to-understand instructions and over 230 inspiring lifestyle photos.

With this guide you'll learn all the basics, including how to:

  • Decorate using a variety of plants
  • Combine plants, rocks and other objects to achieve just the right look
  • Choose the right container for your plants
  • Care for a variety of plants, including low-maintenance ones like succulents, air plants and mosses


This book includes 52 projects that teach you how to create a wide variety of terrariums--from open-air containers, like bowls, to jars and hanging decorations. No matter how you choose to display them, terrariums are a whimsical, easy and inexpensive addition to your home.

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The Heirloom Life Gardener

Jere and Emilee Gettle

Tired of genetically modified food every day, Americans are moving more toward eating natural, locally grown food that is free of pesticides and preservatives-and there is no better way to ensure this than to grow it yourself. Anyone can start a garden, whether in a backyard or on a city rooftop; but what they need to truly succeed is The Heirloom Life Gardener, a comprehensive guide to cultivating heirloom vegetables.

In this invaluable resource, Jere and Emilee Gettle, cofounders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, offer a wealth of knowledge to every kind of gardener-experienced pros and novices alike. In his friendly voice, complemented by gorgeous photographs, Jere gives planting, growing, harvesting, and seed saving tips. In addition, an extensive A to Z Growing Guide includes amazing heirloom varieties that many people have never even seen. From seed collecting to the history of seed varieties and name origins, Jere takes you far beyond the heirloom tomato. This is the first book of its kind that is not only a guide to growing beautiful and delicious vegetables, but also a way to join the movement of people who long for real food and a truer way of living.

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Garden Renovation

Bobbie Schwartz

Gardens, just like houses, sometimes need makeovers. The changes can be as minor as replacing a shrub or as major as pulling everything up and starting from scratch. No matter the size of your space or the scope of the project, the sage advice in Garden Renovation will help you turn a problem-filled yard into a paradise. Bobbie Schwartz draws on her years of experience as a garden designer to teach gardeners how to evaluate their yards, determine what to keep and what to remove, choose the right plants and design plans for successful remodels, and know when to hire help. A gallery of before-and-after photos provides ideas and inspiration for turning a tired garden into an enlivening retreat.

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The First-Time Gardener: Growing Plants and Flowers

Sean McManus

Caring for outdoor plantings can be intimidating, especially if the process is completely new to you. Before running to the hardware store to stock up on plastic bags of mulch and tools you don’t really need, arm yourself with the know-how to plant and tend outdoor areas correctly and safely. Doing so saves you time, money, and energy—and helps make the process a whole lot more fun!

With help from this easy-to-follow beginner gardening guide, you’ll learn:

  • Tips for selecting the best plants and flowers for your growing conditions 
  • The best planting techniques for different types of plants
  • How to mulch trees, shrubs, and garden beds correctly 
  • Pruning dos and don’ts for common garden plants
  • Ways to keep weeds out of outdoor areas—without using synthetic herbicides
  • How to recognize and manage different pests and diseases naturally
  • Insider tips on everything from the difference between annuals and perennials to choosing the best organic fertilizer
  • Plus, you’ll find time-management advice and tips for effective, resource-conscious gardening
View Details >>

Successful Container Gardening

Joe Provey

This book describes the advantages to container gardening in words and pictures. It includes more than 300 color photos and 20 illustrations, along with advice for choosing the right container and soil medium; dozens of plant-specific "recipes" for container gardens of flowers, vegetables, shrubs, and trees categorized by sunlight requirements; strategies for irrigation; expert tips for disease and pest prevention; and foolproof instructions for pruning, pinching, and bedding.

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Martha's flowers : a practical guide to growing, gathering, and enjoying

Martha Stewart Kevin Sharkey

Martha Stewart's lifelong love of flowers began at a young age, as she dug in and planted alongside her father in their family garden, growing healthy, beautiful blooms, every year. The indispensable lessons she learned then--and those she has since picked up from master gardeners--form the best practices she applies to her voluminous flower gardens today. For the first time, she compiles the wisdom of a lifetime spent gardening into a practical yet inspired book. Learn how and when to plant, nurture, and at the perfect time, cut from your garden. With lush blooms in hand, discover how to build stunning arrangements. Accompanied by beautiful photographs of displays in Martha's home, bursting with ideas, and covering every step from seed to vase, Martha's Flowers is a must-have handbook for flower gardeners and enthusiasts of all skill levels.

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Straw Bale Gardens Complete

Joel Karsten

The reception and enthusiasm for straw bale gardening, introduced in 2013, has proved revolutionary in vegetable growing. Why? Because the bold promises in the book are kept: grow vegetables anywhere, earlier in the year, with no weeding. Gardeners everywhere are excited. Straw bale gardening works!

In just the short amount of time that has passed, the gardening world and Joel Karsten himself have learned even more about how to apply this method in just about any environment: on a city balcony, in a rocky outpost, in a desert, and even in the tundra of Alaska.

Straw Bale Gardens Complete contains all of the original information that has set the gardening world on fire. But it also goes much deeper, with nearly 50 pages of all-new advice and photos on subjects such as growing in a tight urban setting, making your straw bale garden completely organic, and using new fertilizers and conditioning products. There is even information on using straw bale techniques to grow veggies in other organic media for anyone who has a hard time finding straw.

Fans of Straw Bale Gardens will not want to miss adding Straw Bale Gardens Complete to their gardening library. There is, literally, nothing else like it!

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Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings

The Editors of Sunset

This book illustrates that intricate, fragrant, and well-designed gardens don't need to be time-consuming to tend. Gardeners of all levels will learn about the types of plants that make their gardens as easy to care for as they are easy on the eyes. The Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings is a book about smart plants, and smart ways to combine them, focusing on specific plant groups that are especially easy, that belong together, and that take the same conditions. Featuring chapters full of plant charts with photos, brief descriptions, and care advice, readers are sure to glean inspiration, design ideas, and enough tips and tricks to build their own garden that radiates both ease and beauty.

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Beautiful No-Mow Yards

Evelyn Hadden

With Beautiful No-Mow Yards, you can transform your lawn into a livable garden and bring nature's beauty into your life!

What has your perfect green lawn done for you lately? Is it really worth the time, effort, and resources you lavish on it? Armed with encouragement, inspiration, and cutting-edge advice from award-winning author Evelyn Hadden, you can liberate yourself at last!

In this ultimate guide to rethinking your yard, Hadden showcases dozens of inspiring, eco-friendly alternatives to that demanding (and dare we say boring?) green turf. Trade your lawn for a lively prairie or replace it with a runoff-reducing rain garden. Swap it for an interactive adventure garden or convert it to a low-maintenance living carpet.

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Iowa Gardens of the Past

Beth Cody

There's something about vintage garden photos: preserved moments of beauty from gardens long gone. Iowa Gardens of the Past features 300+ color and grayscale images of beautiful Iowa gardens, together with lovely seed catalog art, from the mid-nineteenth century through 1980. From impressive mansion grounds to humble flower-filled farmsteads, they include: Victorian-style flower bedding; formal rose gardens; exotic Japanese-style gardens; midcentury modern landscaping. Discover how Iowans coped with severe weather events, economic depressions, world wars, grasshopper plagues and Dutch Elm Disease. Despite these challenges, Iowans have made countless gardens of great beauty. Now these gardens can be admired and enjoyed once again, in these hauntingly beautiful images of Iowa Gardens of the Past.

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Covering Ground

Barbara W. Ellis

Ground covers are a pretty and practical way to bring diversity, elegance, and durability to open sweeps of lawn. Give your landscape a vibrant new palette that is both sustainable and low-maintenance through plantings of herbs, shrubs, mosses, and more. Barbara W. Ellis provides a variety of full-color lawn designs and professional planting advice to get you started. You’ll be amazed as your ordinary lawn transforms into a striking display of color and texture. 

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Slow Gardening

Felder Rushing

Thanks to the resurgence of home and community gardening, more and more people are discovering the pleasure of biting into a sun-ripened tomato picked right off the vine, the earthy smell of freshly turned soil, and the cheerful harbingers of spring such as daffodils, irises, and pansies. But they are also discovering that gardening can be a heck of a lot of work. So what happens when keeping up with the weeds turns into a full-time job? What do you do when gardening becomes stressful?

Slow Gardening to the rescue! Inspired by Slow Food, an international movement that promotes local food systems and biological and cultural diversity, the slow-gardening approach can help us all appreciate and enjoy our gardens more, year in and year out.Felder Rushing, a well-known and truly one-of-a-kind garden expert, offers this practical yet philosophical approach to gardening - one that will help you slow down, take stock of your yard, and follow your own creative whimsy in the garden.

Slow Gardening will inspire you to slip into the rhythm of the seasons, take it easy, and get more enjoyment out of your garden, all at the same time.

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Hellstrip Gardening

Evelyn Hadden

The hellstrip--also known as a boulevard, meridian, and planting strip--is finally getting the attention it deserves! Gardeners everywhere are taking advantage of the space to add curb appeal to their homes, expand the size of their gardens, and conserve more resources. Hellstrip Gardening is the first book to show you exactly how to reclaim these oft-ignored spaces by determining the city and home owner's association rules, choosing plants that thrive in tough situations, designing pathways for accessibility, and much more. Gorgeous color photographs of hellstrip gardens across the country offer inspiration and visual guidance to anyone ready to tackle this final frontier.

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