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With literally hundreds of choices, it can be overwhelming to decide which perennials to plant in your garden. Nancy J. Ondra takes the stressful guesswork out of perennial garden planning by offering 52 vibrant designs, each made up of only five plants. Ondra tailors each simple design to a specific set of growing conditions, with plenty of tips to help your planting mature. Enjoy gardens full of sun-drenched blooming flowers and shade-loving greenery for years to come.
The most complete book on the market for homeowners, the BLACK+DECKER The Book of Home How-To, Updated 2nd Edition offers current, full color step-by-step photographic instruction for thousands of home repair and home maintenance jobs.
Written and compiled by the knowledgeable editors at Cool Springs Press--recognized experts in DIY home improvement and maintenance with more than thirty years of experience in home improvement and hundreds of best-selling books under the BLACK+DECKER brand--this is DIY instruction you can trust.
BLACK+DECKER The Book of Home How-to, Updated 2nd Edition is the ultimate reference for maintaining any type of home, from a small apartment to a mega mansion. This book is the most essential tool in any homeowner's belt, providing expert know-how on how to repair almost anything in easy, accessible instruction.
This A-to-Z encyclopedia offers precise how-to instructions and clear photos on every page. With an expanded index that is incredibly intuitive and a simple, alphabetical strategy for organizing the information, you won't spend precious time wading through stuff you don't need to know.
Finding first-rate information on home care has never been easier, and all the most common tasks around your home are covered--including:
And that's just scratching the surface. Just about any repair or remodeling project you can imagine is right here, at your fingertips.
What happens inside a seed after it is planted? How are plants structured? How do plants reproduce? The answers to these and other questions about complex plant processes can be found in the bestselling Botany for Gardeners. Written in accessible language, this must-have guide allows gardeners and horticulturists to understand plants from the plant's point of view. Now in its third edition, Botany for Gardeners has now been expanded and updated, and includes an appendix on plant taxonomy, a comprehensive index, and dozens of new photos and illustrations.
100,000 sold in hardcover
It's hard to imagine a more comprehensive look at color scheme possibilities.
--Los Angeles Times
What a cool idea for the color challenged among us... 200 combinations fit for a king and queen and their royal family.
--Booklist
When it comes to decorating, the endless color choices available are enough to overwhelm the most determined home decorator. The Color Scheme Bible solves that problem, and with hardcover sales of 100,000 its value is well proven. This lay-flat paperback edition is sure to be an equally popular choice.
With 200 color scheme ideas to choose from, The Color Scheme Bible is an easy-to-use and inspiring reference to using color in the home. It describes how colors interact and the effects they have on a room. It explains how to choose colors that complement each other for a subdued effect, and which colors and combinations energize a room. The book also includes 50 recommended palettes that can be used with different materials for refreshingly original color schemes.
Features include:
The Color Scheme Bible changed the way we approach choosing colors for the walls, floors and furniture in our homes. It is an essential handbook for decorators and interior designers.
For people who don't have space or time for traditional gardening and who need expert advice on choosing and using plants and containers to create their own container garden, large or small. At long last, a smart and sensible gardening guide from the most trusted name in gardening.
Compiled from the pages of Fine Gardening magazine, Container Gardening will inspire readers with:
More than a collection of inspiring container gardening photographs, Container Gardening for All Seasons provides a shopping list of materials and a helpful planting diagram for each of the more than 100 container options. Designed like a recipe book, the book offers even the most novice gardeners a no-fail, easy-to-follow instruction format for each container. Gardeners can choose the recipes by season that fit the sun and shade conditions of their landscape. Author Barbara Wise includes all you need to know to plan, plant, grow and maintain a container garden. Fabulous colorful fall and winter container choices are also included.
Whether you live in a country farmhouse or an urban apartment, find inspiration for every room in your home. Come cozy up with your creativity and Liz's welcoming voice so you can love the feeling of being at home.
In this beautiful book of house and garden photography and DIY inspiration, popular blogger Liz Marie Galvan shares:
In Cozy White Cottage, Liz offers her best home décor and design tips to help you create a space you'll love coming home to. You'll love Liz's real-life, easy, and affordable ideas to get the most out of your home and discover things like:
Each month hundreds of thousands of readers find design inspiration and DIY ideas on Liz's blog, where Liz shares stories of life with her veteran husband, Jose, their 1800s Michigan farmhouse, and the home décor boutique she co-owns. Cozy White Cottage offers inspiration for every style and makes the perfect self-purchase, housewarming gift, birthday treat, Mother's Day read, or holiday gift.
Thousands of books on interior design have come and gone since the 1897 publication of this pioneering manual, but The Decoration of Houses remains, thanks to the insightful and inspiring advice of its co-authors. Before she became the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton was a society matron, remodeling a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. With the able assistance of architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton assembled this corrective to the rampant vulgarity of her nouveau riche neighbors. Wharton and Codman defied the excesses of the Gilded Age, counseling readers to reject the popular penchant for clutter in favor of simplicity and balance.
More than an engaging item of period charm, this historic guide offers examples of design rooted in architectural principles. Black-and-white photographs illustrate the authors' ideals of classic beauty, depicting grand ballrooms and spacious boudoirs as well as the elements common to homes of every size and era: doors and windows, walls and ceilings, floors, halls, and stairs. One of the genre's most important and influential titles, this volume sparked a Renaissance in American interior design, and its sound advice and practical approach remain forever in style.
"An informative and celebratory resource." --Booklist
In this beautiful and empowering book, Jennifer Jewell--host of public radio's award-winning program and podcast Cultivating Place--introduces 75 inspiring women. Working in wide-reaching fields that include botany, floral design, landscape architecture, farming, herbalism, and food justice, these influencers are creating change from the ground up. Profiled women include flower farmer Erin Benzakein; codirector of Soul Fire Farm Leah Penniman; plantswoman Flora Grubb; edible and cultural landscape designer Leslie Bennett; Caribbean-American writer and gardener Jamaica Kincaid; soil scientist Elaine Ingham; landscape designer Ariella Chezar; floral designer Amy Merrick, and many more. Rich with personal stories and insights, Jewell's portraits reveal a devotion that transcends age, locale, and background, reminding us of the profound role of green growing things in our world--and our lives."A visual treat as well as a literary one, Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life will be deeply satisfying for gardeners and garden lovers, connoisseurs of botanical illustration, and those who seek a deeper understanding of the life and work of Emily Dickinson." --The Wall Street Journal
Emily Dickinson was a keen observer of the natural world, but less well known is the fact that she was also an avid gardener--sending fresh bouquets to friends, including pressed flowers in her letters, and studying botany at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke. At her family home, she tended both a small glass conservatory and a flower garden. In Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life, award-winning author Marta McDowell explores Dickinson's deep passion for plants and how it inspired and informed her writing. Tracing a year in the garden, the book reveals details few know about Dickinson and adds to our collective understanding of who she was as a person. By weaving together Dickinson's poems, excerpts from letters, contemporary and historical photography, and botanical art, McDowell offers an enchanting new perspective on one of America's most celebrated but enigmatic literary figures.- 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 the perfect gift for anyone who loves flowers. - The definitive guide to flower arranging from the biggest star in the farm-to-centerpiece movement
- Perfect to gift 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 Harampol, Seasonal Flower Arranging by Ariella Chezar, and The Flower Chef by Carly Cylinder.
The ultimate color-by-color flower reference guide - from New York's pre-eminent floral designers, Putnam and Putnam
Planning a wedding, a dinner, a birthday party, a romantic evening, holiday entertaining, or just arranging flowers for the pleasure of having them, more often than not your creative process begins with thinking about the color of the flowers that you want. To help you find what you are looking for, Flower Color Guide is the first reference book to organize flower types by color, with an emphasis on seasonality and creative color schemes - and the results are stunning in their sheer variety. What Pantone is to color, Flower Color Guide is to flowers.
Showcasing 400 flowers at their peak, with stunning photography taken by Putnam & Putnam in their Brooklyn studio, this guide includes an appendix featuring perforated pages, with tips on flower care, notes on how to prepare vessels and a list of suggested color schemes. A great gift to give, or to have for oneself, the book speaks to the most seasoned flower enthusiasts as well as those just beginning to explore the possibilities of arranging flowers.
Michael and Darroch Putnam have built a reputation for romantic, dramatic floral arrangements and installations using color as their guiding principle - here, they share their knowledge with readers worldwide: "This is the book we wished we had when we started doing flowers."
Here's your chance to become a more efficient carpenter. Larry Haun has been a production framer for more than 35 years and a teacher of apprentices for more than 20. In this book, Haun shows you, step by step, all the techniques he uses to frame a basic house, from laying down the sills to cutting the rafters. You'll learn about:
There is an opening chapter on tools, plans, codes, permits, lumber, and materials, and additional information throughout the book on safety and site-built tools. The Very Efficient Carpenter is no less than a complete course in basic framing.
The first edition of Gaia's Garden sparked the imagination of America's home gardeners, introducing permaculture's central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.
Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening--which involves growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants--can take place only on a large, multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it's fun and easy to create a "backyard ecosystem" by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform a variety of functions, including:
This revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it's established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that's needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.
Garden Alchemy is a hands-on guide for do-it-yourself gardeners who want to turn their garden into gold using natural recipes and herbal concoctions (while saving both time and money!).
This gardening recipe and project book is packed with over 80 ideas to naturally beautify your garden, using organic methods that regenerate your soil and revitalize your plants. By following the processes that are closest to nature, it brings the gardener in sync with the garden, allowing plants to thrive with less effort and less cost.
Recipes for mixing your own potting soils and homemadeorganic fertilizers give you the freedom to choose what ingredients make their way into your garden. Step-by-step instructions for building a compost pile, concocting soil tests, and constructing inexpensive DIY seed-starting equipment are accompanied by gorgeous, full-color, step-by-step photography. You'll also find recipes for natural pest deterrents and traps, garden teas, and growth-boosting foliar sprays to help your garden grow strong all season long.
Garden Alchemy starts with home experiments to help you get to know your soil and customize recipes for your individual needs. The rest of the chapters share how to decipher and combine natural ingredients to make the best quality amendments and elixirs. Detailed descriptions of earth-based materials demystify common ingredients, such as mycorrhizae, biochar, and greensand, and help you learn how to fix common garden problems with minimal effort. The simple method of making use of what you have available supports plants better than brand-name products.
Dozens of recipes and projects include:
Written by Stephanie Rose, the creative gardener, permaculturist, and herbalist behind the popular website Garden Therapy, this fun and beautifully illustrated book is packed with great ideas and inspiration for DIY gardeners who want to embrace their creativity and have more control of the garden's care.
This succulent encyclopedia is a useful resource for everyone--from cacti beginners looking to decorate their living space to serious gardeners hoping to expand their succulent plantings.
Any backyard has the potential to refresh and inspire if you know what to do. Jan Johnsen's new book, Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces, will delight all garden lovers with over 130 lushly illustrated landscape design and planting suggestions. Ms. Johnsen is an admired designer and popular speaker whose hands-on approach to "co-creating with nature" will have you saying, "I can do that!'
This info-packed, sumptuous book offers individual tips for enhancing any size landscape using 'real world' solutions. The suggestions are grouped into five categories that include Garden Design and Artful Accents, Walls, Patios, and Steps and Plants and Planting, among others. Whether you are an experienced gardener or a landscaping novice, Gardentopia will inspire you with tips such as 'Soften a Corner", "Paint it Black", and "Hide and Reveal".
Plant selection and garden style are deeply influenced by where we are gardening. To successfully grow a range of beautiful ornamental plants, every gardener has to know the specifics of the region's climate, soil, and geography.
Gardeners in the northeast are lucky--the regular summer rain, gorgeous summer blooms, and stunning fall color make it an ideal place to garden. But there are drawbacks, like hot and humid summers, bitterly cold winters, and mosquitos. TThe practical and beautiful Growing the Northeast Garden starts with a comprehensive overview of the weather and geography of the area, along with regionally specific advice on zones, microclimates, soil, pests, and maintenance. Profiles of the best trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, and bulbs offer hundreds of plant suggestions, along with complete information on growth and care.Further topics include: Making up a bed with hospital corners, Expert recommendations for safe food storage, Reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), Keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, Home safety and security, A summary of laws applicable to the home, including privacy, accident liability, contracts, and domestic employees and more in this practical, good-humored, historic, philosophical, even romantic, guidebook to the art of household management.
Featuring one hundred of the most spectacular interiors across the world, this richly illustrated overview spans the entire twentieth century to the present day and includes interiors assembled by leading artists, fashion designers, architects, and interior and set designers. Bringing together diverse design talents, from Piero Fornasetti and Coco Chanel to Alvar Aalto, Marc Newson, and Matthew Williamson, this expanded edition of The Iconic Interior also features three new interiors from Los Angeles-based Commune Design, Morocco-based tile designers Samuel and Caitlin Dowe-Sandes, and Dimore Studio's London house interior for the owners of fashion design studio Dsquared2. The book also features a list of designer biographies and key works, making this a complete resource for designers and students.
Representing every style, from minimalism and art nouveau to neotraditional and Gesamtkunstwerk creations that defy definition, these iconic interiors are sure to inspire all audiences, from designers and students to homeowners and DIY enthusiasts.
For centuries, plants have transformed interiors, and today plant-filled homes are filling up our Instagram feeds. With Indoor Green, author and retailer Bree Claffey explores the interior worlds of fellow plant lovers and the enduring attraction of houseplants. From the ever-reliable peace lily and beguiling fiddle-leaf fig to the elusive Chinese money plant, Indoor Green makes it obvious that even the humblest greenery can transform a home.
Houseplants add romance to any room. Within the pages of Indoor Green, gorgeous photographs of interiors from across the globe--divided into chapters such as "Plant Music," "How to Grow Fresh Air," and "Plant Portraits," make the magic easy to replicate in one's own home. Interviews of indoor green enthusiasts appear in this paperback alongside the imagery, as well as tips on caring for plants and an index of plant varieties. More than good-looking props, plants are living, growing, joyful things rooted in creativity--and Indoor Green makes it obvious that even the humblest greenery can transform a home.
This updated and revised edition of The Interior Design Reference & Specification Book gives you the information essential to planning and executing interior projects of all shapes and sizes in a format that is as easy to use as it is to carry--now including interviews with top practitioners from across the field of interior design.
With detailed charts, specifications, diagrams, and digital information for planning and executing projects of every scale, this accessible reference explores these vital design topics:
The Interior Design Reference & Specification Book is an essential sourcebook for designers, students of design, and anyone undertaking an interior design project.
The Reference & Specification Book series from Rockport Publishers offers students and practicing professionals in a range of creative industries must-have information in their area of specialty in an up-to-date, concise handbook.
"A veritable goldmine for gardeners." --Plant Talk
We've all seen gorgeous perennial gardens packed with color, texture, and multi-season interest. Designed by a professional and maintained by a crew, they are aspirational bits of beauty too difficult to attempt at home. Or are they? The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden makes a design-magazine-worthy garden achievable at home. The new, simplified approach is made up of hardy, beautiful plants grown on a 10x14 foot grid. Each of the 62 garden plans combines complementary plants that thrive together and grow as a community. They are designed to make maintenance a snap. The garden plans can be followed explicitly or adjusted to meet individual needs, unlocking rich perennial landscape designs for individualization and creativity.In Lawns Into Meadows, landscape designer Owen Wormser makes a case for the power and generosity of meadows. In a world where lawns have wreaked havoc on our natural ecosystems, meadows offer a compelling solution. They establish wildlife and pollinator habitats. They're low-maintenance and low-cost. They have a built-in resilience that helps them weather climate extremes, and they can draw down and store far more carbon dioxide than any manicured lawn. They're also beautiful, all year round.
Owen describes how to plant an organic meadow that's right for your site, whether it's a yard, community garden, or tired city lot. He shares advice on preparing your plot, coming up with the right design, and planting--all without using synthetic chemicals. He passes along tips on building support in neighborhoods where a tidy lawn is the standard. Owen also profiles twenty-one starter grasses and flowers for beginning meadow-makers, and offers guidance on how to grow each one.
To illuminate the many joys of meadow-building, Owen draws on his own stories, including how growing up off the grid in northern Maine, with no electricity or plumbing, prepared him for his work. The book, part how-to guide and part memoir, is for environmentalists and climate activists, gardeners and non-gardeners alike.
Lawns Into Meadows is part of Stone Pier Press's Citizen Gardening series, which teaches readers how to grow food and garden in ways that are good for the planet.
Around the world, a community movement is underway featuring quaint landscape structures mounted on posts in front yards and other green spaces. Some are built for personal use, as miniature sheds for gardeners or as decorative accent pieces. More commonly, though, they are evidence of the growing trend toward neighborhood organization and community outreach.
This movement has been popularized by Wisconsin-based Little Free Library (LFL), whose members currently include 75,000 stewards seeking to build community togetherness and promote reading at the same time by sharing books among neighbors. LFL has inspired builders to use similar structures to share things like CDs, food, garden tools, and seeds in the community.
Produced in cooperation with Little Free Library, Little Free Libraries and Tiny Sheds is the builder's complete source of inspiration and how-to knowledge. Illustrated throughout with colorful step-by-step photography and a gallery of tiny structures for further inspiration, Little Free Libraries and Tiny Sheds covers every step: planning and design, tools and building techniques, best materials, and 12 complete plans for structures of varying size and aesthetics. In addition, author and professional carpenter Phil Schmidt includes information on proper installation of small structures and common repairs and maintenance for down the road.
Little Free Libraries and Tiny Sheds even includes information on how to become a steward, getting the word out about your little structure once it's up and running, and tips for building a lively collection.
Community togetherness has never been so at the fore of our consciousness--or so important. Little Free Libraries and Tiny Sheds is one tool on the road to helping you build community in your neighborhood.
Llewellyn's Herbal Almanac offers a wide variety of practical ideas on how to benefit from nature's most versatile plants. With hands-on projects, fresh ideas, and tips and techniques, this guide is designed for herb enthusiasts of all skill levels. It also features innovative herbal ideas that span gardening, cooking, crafts, health, beauty, history, and lore. This year's edition also includes profiles for ginger, rhubarb, chamomile, sunflower, and comfrey and articles on:
Aromatics for Nervous, Respiratory, and Digestive Systems - Edible Wild Herbs and Grasses - Swedish Princess Cake with Matcha - Chewable Herbal Pills - Late-Season Herb Gardening - Italian Citrus Fruits - Soup Garden - Tinctures - Crafting with Recycled Materials - Herbal Bath Recipes - The Gardens of Pompeii - Gourmet Herbal Sandwiches - Conservation Plants - Homemade Herbal Scrubs - And Much More
"More than just a story of an abiding cultural preoccupation, The Longing For Less peels back the commodified husk of minimalism to reveal something surprising and thoroughly alive." -Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing
"Thoughtful and absorbing . . . A superb outing from a gifted young critic that will spark joy in many readers." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Less is more" Everywhere we hear the mantra. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems. We commit to cleanse diets and strive for inbox zero. Amid the frantic pace and distraction of everyday life, we covet silence-and airy, Instagrammable spaces in which to enjoy it. The popular term for this brand of upscale austerity, "minimalism," has mostly come to stand for things to buy and consume. But minimalism has richer, deeper, and altogether more valuable gifts to offer.
Kyle Chayka is one of our sharpest cultural observers. After spending years covering minimalist trends for leading publications, he now delves beneath this lifestyle's glossy surface, seeking better ways to claim the time and space we crave. He shows that our longing for less goes back further than we realize. His search leads him to the philosophical and spiritual origins of minimalism, and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin and Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and designers; visionaries and misfits. As Chayka looks anew at their extraordinary lives and explores the places where they worked-from Manhattan lofts to the Texas high desert and the back alleys of Kyoto-he reminds us that what we most require is presence, not absence. The result is an elegant new synthesis of our minimalist desires and our profound emotional needs.