Showing titles in Gardening & Horticulture

A practical and compassionate guide to rekindling your connection with nature and opening up to plant consciousness for guidance and inspiration to enrich your path. This is a heart-centered journey of discovery, rewilding, and enchantment, inspired by the author’s experiences with plants while running a flower farm.

Spending time in nature is good for both our bodies and minds - but with our hectic lives (not to mention the unreliable British weather), it can be hard to get outside as much as we'd like. But fear not: we've selected some of BBC Radio 4's best nature documentaries to transport you to the great outdoors - and encourage you to take your own trip into the wild.

The organic grower's guide to planting, propagation, culture, and ecology. Trees are our allies in healing the world. Partnering with trees allows us to build soil, enhance biodiversity, increase wildlife populations, grow food and medicine, and pull carbon out of the atmosphere, sequestering it in the soil. Author Akiva Silver is an enthusiastic tree grower with years of experience running his own commercial nursery. In this audiobook, he clearly explains the most important concepts necessary for success with perennial woody plants.

When Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer set out to create their farm in an historic Normandy village, they had no idea just how much their lives would change. Neither one had ever farmed before. Charles had been circumnavigating the globe by sail, operating a floating school that taught students about ecology and indigenous cultures. Perrine had been an international lawyer in Japan. Each had returned to France to start a new life.

This book has been written for anyone who has heard the whispers of the wild and has been stirred to know more, for those with a political conscience and for lovers of the outdoors. Whether you are new to the ways of herbs or already a practising herbalist, it explains how you can take your physical and mental health into your own hands using the plants that grow around you.

Almost every plant in a garden forms a relationship with fungi, and many plants would not exist without their fungal partners. By better understanding this relationship, home gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of fungi, which include an increased uptake in nutrients, resistance to drought, earlier fruiting, and more. This must-have guide will teach you how fungi interact with plants and how to best to employ them in your home garden.

Would your garden, small or large, in town or country, win a prize? Is there room for improvement? Everybody has favourite plants, but the ability to put them all together to ensure a splendid show throughout the year is a skill that must be acquired. The Well-Chosen Garden will guide you to making the most of your available space, help you avoid untimely gaps, colour clashes and many other pitfalls of garden planning.

Ben fell in love with orchids as a nine-year-old, when his parents bought him a Cymbidium. That love then led him to spend his twenties in various tropical cities, teaching English and exploring jungles where exotic orchid species grew wild, pollinated by hummingbirds, huge moths and more. After a decade abroad, Ben returned to the UK. Here, his passion re-ignited when he encountered a colony of Bee orchids, a cryptic species which tricks bees into mating with its flowers. Ben was entranced.

Do you like the idea of having an orchard right outside your window but have zero ideas of where you should start? While vegetables last a season or two in the garden, most fruits, shrubs, and trees live for 10 to 50 years or more. With a little planning and guidance, you will soon be biting into mellow fruits. Many urban gardeners avoid growing fruits because they think it’s too much work and impossible to hack, but this guide will show you a way around it.

Mycelium Running is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes.

In search of a quieter, simpler life, style icon and longtime New Yorker Amanda Brooks moved with her family in 2012 from New York City to her husband's farm in England. Originally intended to be a yearlong creative sabbatical, Brooks's relocation became permanent as she discovered newfound personal and professional freedom, told here through a year's changing seasons. Creatively inspiring, warm and witty, and brimming with delicious recipes and entertaining how-tos, Farm from Home is a chronicle of the joys and challenges of a more focused way of living.

Like an artist, you’ll learn how to use planting and hardscaping to make stunning terrarium compositions. Plus, master the fundamentals of successful growing – soil, water, and light – so your plants thrive. With a combination of projects and deep dives into plant groups and care advice, you’ll be well on your way to curating your own terrarium wonderland with Hello Tiny World.

Our modern-day cities might seem to represent our separation from the natural world. In fact, as Ben Wilson reveals in this captivating re-examination of urban landscapes around the world, nature has always been at the heart of the city. Wilson explores the wild side of cities, past, present and future: the middens, abandoned sites and strips of land alongside railway lines.

Thirty-four years ago, when they were in their 20s, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave their lives in New York City and move to Christine’s ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the Earth.

Your pathway to a sustainable, self-sufficient life is closer than you think... Acquire the skills to become a master homesteader, even if you're starting from scratch, or live in the middle of the city! Have you dreamed of living off the land, creating your food source, and fostering a life of resilience and sustainability? Is the idea of homesteading appealing yet filled with a million questions and doubts?

The Money-Saving Gardener reveals the tips and tricks to keeping costs down without compromising on style or impact. Learn how to repurpose what you have, make the most of so-called garden "waste", and boost your plant collection for next to nothing with seed-saving and propagation hacks. Revealing the plants that will give you the best long-term value for money, cost-cutting tips for every season, and projects for making the most of your propagated cuttings and seedlings, The Money-Saving Gardener proves that a stunning garden doesn't need to cost the earth or break the bank.

Steph Herrington runs a successful hair salon—she can make your hair look amazing but she's no gardener! An allotment was her late husband's dream. But when her daughter, Jessie, decides to take the plot on in her dad's memory, Steph sees a chance to bridge the gulf that grew between them as their loving, close-knit family fell apart. Only the gnarly tangle of weeds and thorns—and working together to tame it—is far worse than they'd imagined!

By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor. Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed by progressive farms around the world....

As development and subsequent habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. But there is an important and simple step toward reversing this alarming trend: Everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity. Bringing Nature Home has sparked a national conversation about the link between healthy local ecosystems and human well-being, and this audio edition will help broaden the movement. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical recommendations, everyone can make a difference.

In this book, Jeff Lowenfels digs into the new science behind how endophytic bacteria supply nutrients to a large array of plants and explains, in accessible language, how this information applies to home gardeners, small-scale farmers, and cannabis growers. Based on cutting-edge science that will help gardeners increase plant health and productivity, Teaming with Bacteria is a must-have addition to every organic gardener’s library.