Recent Acquisitions

Leo’s Tree

Debora Pearson

When Leo is born, his father plants a tree—a scratchy, branchy linden tree. Soon Leo is growing hair and the tree is sprouting buds, the first of many delightful changes that boy and tree experience during their early years together. As the seasons change, Leo and his tree continue to grow strong and true.

Then, when a baby sister joins the family, her tender new sapling is planted next to Leo’s sturdy tree.

Plants That Never Ever Bloom

Ruth Heller

Brief rhyming text and illustrations present a variety of plants that do not flower but propagate by means of spores, seeds, and cones.

The Reason for a Flower

Ruth Heller

The reason for a flower is to manufacture seeds, but Ruth Heller shares a lot more about parts of plants and their functions in her trademark rhythmic style.

50 Keystone Flora Species of British Columbia & the Pacific Northwest

Collin Varner

This full-color, pocket-sized field guide highlights fifty keystone trees, flowering plants, fruit-bearing plants, marine plants, and fungi found across the Pacific Northwest bioregion. Species profiled include Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, large-leafed lupine, wild mint, Salal, salmonberry, marine eelgrass, and red-belted polypore. Each entry features clear photography, etymology, descriptions, habitat information, and risks and warnings. This convenient and easy-to-use reference is perfect for walkers, hikers, campers, and beachcombers and important for raising awareness of the need to conserve and protect these vital species

Grow

Riz Reyes

Discover 15 plants and fungi with life-changing powers. Meet their surprising relatives (the tasty tomato is a cousin of deadly nightshade!) and unearth their interesting stories (lettuce was the first plant to be grown in space!). Then follow step-by-step instructions to grow and care for each one, whether you have a big backyard garden or a sunny windowsill.

World of Northern Evergreens

E.C. Pielou

Noted ecologist E. C. Pielou introduces the biology of the northern forests and provides a unique invitation to naturalists, ecologists, foresters, and everyone living in northern North America who wants to learn about this unique and threatened northern world and the species that make it their home.

Book of Kale & Friends

Sharon Hanna

There are good reasons why the Kale Revolution is growing — this humble leafy green is one of the healthiest vegetables on earth, it thrives in winter and sweetens in the cold, it self-seeds, its flowers sustain bees, and it’s so easy to grow.

Kale, available in so many gorgeous varieties, grows well in pots, and anyone with a balcony, back porch or limited outdoor space can access fresh, tender leaves year-round. In addition to tips on kale cultivation, branch out with thirteen other superfood crops that are equally easy to grow, as well as nutritious and versatile in the kitchen.

Botanical Dyes

Babs Behan

Botanical Dyes features recipes and top tips on everything you need to know to make your own natural dyes. The process of turning plants into print can help you reconnect with nature, find a creative outlet and develop a mindful sense of presence. It also promotes an awareness of sustainable practices and how to reduce our impact on the planet. Babs talks the home crafter through everything from foraging for dyes, making mordants, creating an array of colors and then putting your new knowledge to the test through some simple projects.

Home Landscaping Northwest Region

Roger Holmes

Readers will find inspiring ideas for making the home landscape more attractive and functional. The 48 featured designs are created by landscape professionals from the region and use more than 200 plants that thrive in the northwest. Detailed instructions for projects such as paths, patios, ponds, and arbors are also included. Over 400 full-color photos and paintings are complemented by easy, step-by-step instructions.

Sow Simple

Christina Symons

Sow Simple shows how plants thrive thanks to back-sparing and thrifty techniques for propagation, fertilization and transplanting, plus tips on beneficial fungi and bugs, magical mulches, edible weeds, water-wise wildflowers and native plants. Design-wise, make a spectacular entrance with a living gate, or see how easy it is to create a vertical or rooftop garden, a whimsical water garden or a stone courtyard. Home-crafted concrete troughs stuffed with succulents stand strong alongside dry-stack stone walls, and simple ideas for playhouses, gazebos and backyard benches will keep readers busy through all seasons.

Wild Color

Jenny Dean

A practical and inspiring guide to creating and using natural dyes from plants, Wild Color, Revised and Updated Edition, offers the latest information on current environmentally friendly dyeing techniques and more than 65 species of plants and natural dyestuffs.

This comprehensive book outlines all the necessary equipment, how to select fibres and plant parts, choose the right methods for mordanting and dyeing, test color modifiers and the fastness of dyed colors, and obtain a range of gorgeous colors from every plant, from alter to woad, shown in more than 250 swatches.

Deep Rooted Wisdom

Augustus Jenkins Farmer

We have begun to lose some of the most important skills used by everyday gardeners to create beautiful, productive gardens. With a personality-driven, engaging narrative, Deep Rooted Wisdom teaches accessible, commonsense skills to a new generation of gardeners. Soulful gardener, Augustus Jenkins Farmer, profiles experienced and up-and-coming gardeners who use these skills in their own gardens.

Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate

Wendy Johnson

For more than thirty years, Wendy Johnson has been meditating and gardening at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in northern California, where the fields curve like an enormous green dragon between the hills and the ocean. Now Johnson has distilled her lifetime of experience into this extraordinary celebration of inner and outer growth, showing how the garden cultivates the gardener even as she digs beds, heaps up compost, plants flowers and fruit trees, and harvests bushels of organic vegetables. Johnson is a hands-on, on-her-knees gardener, and she shares with the reader a wealth of practical knowledge and fascinating garden lore.

Butterfly Gardening

Thomas C. Emmel

Create a butterfly haven in your garden. A unique gardening book that shows gardeners the appropriate plants for attracting butterflies. In addition to practical plant information, this lavishly illustrated volume includes a gallery of nearly 70 butterflies, detailing each species’ range and habitats, nectar sources, and larval host plants. Includes sample garden designs and resources.

Pests of the West

Whitney Cranshaw

Entomologist Whitney Cranshaw draws from his experience with master gardeners to show gardeners of all abilities how to combat the major insect pests, plant diseases, and weeds west of the Mississippi. Now fully revised, this common-sense pest control guide comes complete with more than 100 photographs and informative tables.

Easy Care Native Plants

Patricia A. Taylor

North America’s magnificent plant life has a peculiar history in that it is generally regarded as weedy material in its native meadows and woodlands and viewed as a horticultural treasure trove abroad. In Easy Care Native Plants, Patricia A. Taylor seeks to change this situation by emphasizing the elegant beauty, rather than the common naturalness, of American flora and by urging gardeners to capture the exquisite essence of its blossoms and foliage in artistic compositions.

Wetlands

David J. Hawke

Water is the lifeblood of all living things, and wetlands cleanse, cool, and protect this most valuable resource. They also provide a vital habitat for countless species of flora and fauna.

Pie in the Sky

Lois Ehlert

A father and child watch the cherry tree in their backyard, waiting until there are ripe cherries to bake in a pie. Includes a recipe for cherry pie.

Creative Garden Lighting

Michele Osborne

Homeowners, garden designers, landscape professionals, and anyone with an interest in highlighting and improving the look of their home landscape will be inspired to learn how even the most drab setting can be transformed into a stunning showcase garden using simple, modern, and creative lighting schemes. Revealed in these pages are the secrets behind a wide range of lighting styles.

Armitage’s Garden Perennials

Allan Armitage

Armitage’s Garden Perennials is the most comprehensive single-volume photographic resource on perennial plants. It describes and illustrates the choice of perennials in 136 genera from Acanthus to Zauschneria. The book’s greatest strengths are the quality of its more than 1400 photographs and the exhaustive information on the most interesting, important, or overlooked perennial plants.

Vegetable Garden

Douglas Florian

Children are fascinated by watching plants grow, and in this colorful picture book even very young children can follow along with a family as they plant, tend, and harvest a vegetable garden. With its simple rhyming text and bold, colorful illustrations, Vegetable Garden is a delight.

The Tree That Grew to the Moon

Eugenie Fernandes

When Lena finds an uprooted baby tree on the city sidewalk, she brings it home, and her mother thinks of many reasons why she shouldn’t keep it there, but she has a ready answer for all of them.

The People Who Hugged the Trees: An Environmental Folk Tale

Deborah Lee Rose

Based on a 300-year old Indian legend, the story relates how Amrita led desert villagers to protect their forest from the axes of tree-cutters by hugging the trees.

A Tree in the Forest

Jan Thornhill

A dramatic and unique picture book that brings to life the wondrous tale of one tree’s survival through two hundred years of nature’s blessings and scourges.

On a crisp, fall morning a little maple key spins through the air and settles on the life-giving ruins of an ancient tree. So begins the story of a single maple tree and the creatures it nourishes and shelters.

The intricacies of forest ecology and the importance of every link in the chain are highlighted in both the informative narrative and in the exquisitely detailed illustrations. Thornhill’s brilliant drawings, each one alive with color and filled with a multitude of forest animals, will delight kids. From the tiniest cricket to the magnificence of a lighting storm, she captures them all.

How Groundhog’s Garden Grew

Lynne Cherry

When hungry Little Groundhog tries to eat some vegetables out of Squirrel’s garden, kind Squirrel takes him under his proverbial wing and shows him how to plant his own veggies…This charming story teaches children about the interplay among all living things, and the good feeling that comes with community participation and sharing.

Miss Rumphius

Barbara Cooney

Barbara Cooney’s story of Alice Rumphius, who longed to travel the world, live in a house by the sea, and do something to make the world more beautiful, has a timeless quality that resonates with each new generation. The countless lupines that bloom along the coast of Maine are the legacy of the real Miss Rumphius, the Lupine Lady, who scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went. Miss Rumphius received the American Book Award in the year of publication.

Red Leaf Yellow Leaf

Lois Ehlert

In this innovative and colorful work of early nonfiction from Caldecott Honor–winning author Lois Ehlert, little ones are introduced to facts about trees.

Ehlert blends bold graphics, vibrant colors, and precise details in her watercolor collage alongside found objects like seeds, fabric, wire, and roots.

A special glossary explains how roots absorb nutrients, what photosynthesis is, how sap circulates, how to make a bird treat, and other facts about trees. Children and adults will feel inspired to take a closer look at the nature in their own backyards.

Monster Plants: Meat Eaters, Real Stinkers and other Leafy Oddities

Barry Rice

These monsters do not have legs or brains, but they know how to snatch creepy crawlies and smash them up for dinner. They can latch on to other organisms and suck the lives out of them. They can even stink like rotting flesh. Turn the pages of this book if you dare …

Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings: The Ultimate Guide to Low-Water Beds, Borders, and Containers

Editors of Sunset

Intricate, fragrant, and well-designed gardens don’t need to be time-consuming to tend. 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.

Plant Combinations for Your Landscape: Over 400 Inspirational Groupings for Garden Beds & Borders

Tony Lord

Analysis of each of the 400 groupings, explaining how each one works, why it is effective, and what readers need to do to keep the plants flourishing. Suggestions for many alternative plant pairings allow readers to create thousands of the most imaginative and visually effective planting combinations available.

Garden Stone: Creative Ideas, Practical Projects, and Inspiration for Purely Decorative Uses

Barbara Pleasant & Dency Kane

A visual inspiration for creative ways to use stone in gardens, coupled with the practical information needed to carry out those ideas in home landscapes. Gardeners will especially appreciate learning how to interplant in stone walls and paths, erect an espalier against a stone wall, grow a moss garden, and create unique stone sculptures

Cacti and Succulents: An East-to-follow Guide to Their Cultivation and Care

David Squire

An easy-to-follow, practical guide to the successful growing of this fascinating group of plants. Packed with information, it discusses desert and forest cacti, the selection and purchase of healthy specimens, care and propagation.

Keeping It Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America

Douglas Deur & Nancy J Turner

The first comprehensive overview of how Northwest Coast Native Americans managed the landscape and cared for the plant communities on which they depended. It brings together some of the world’s most prominent specialists on Northwest Coast cultures, and tells the story of traditional plant cultivation practices found in the PNW.

A Contemplation Upon Flowers: Garden Plants in Myth and Literatures

Bobby J Ward

Bobby J. Ward traverses the mundane to the mystical in this passionate study of more than eighty garden plants as they appear in literature and myth. Quotations from poems, novels, plays, and stories, some as recent as the nineteenth century, some dating from ancient Greece, vividly illustrate the rich histories of our favorite plants.

Treasured Perennials

Graham Stuart Thomas

A beautiful and generously illustrated volume. Thomas’s choices will amaze some, shock others, and entertain all with odd and incidental asides that are highly relevant to successful cultivation and to the enjoyment of our gardens.

The Illustrated Virago Book of Women Gardeners

Deborah Kellaway

The expertise, toil and creativity of women gardeners throughout the last century is celebrated in this comprehensive anthology, featuring outstanding horticultural writing and illustrated throughout by colour photographs and paintings of the gardens and gardeners.

Secret Life of Butterflies

Rena Ortega

Butterflies may be the most magical of insects–but did you know that some of them can fly almost forty miles per hour? This stunningly illustrated children’s reference shares some of the most incredible and thrilling details about the many kinds of butterflies and moths.

Rainbees & Honeybows

Wendy Picken

This is the story of a tiny, unusual heroine—a damselfly-mouse-bird-moth-frog-beetle—in her quest for her origin story. She rhymes and sings and journeys with friends she meets along the way.

My Delicious Garden

Anne-Marie Fortin & Julien Castanié

The year has just begun. But even in January, with the snow still falling, a little girl is already imagining the great big vegetable garden of her dreams. Month by month, this little gardener describes all the different stages of her garden, and the hard work and careful planning that must go into it before she can reap the juicy rewards.

Blue Camas, Blue Camas

Danielle S. Marcotte

Blue Camas, Blue Camas tells the story of a flower that is native to the Northwest Coast of North America. For thousands of years, it has been considered a sacred and valuable plant by the Indigenous Peoples of this region, who harvested and traded Blue Camas bulbs all along the west coast. The story takes place at the point of contact between a Lkwungen community and a group of Irish settlers, who see the land in very different ways.

A Walk in the Forest

Maria Dek

Celebrates the richness of the forest and its secrets.

Linnea in Monet’s Garden

Christina Bjork

A little girl visits the home and garden of Claude Monet at Giverny, France, and learns about the artist’s paintings and his life. The illustrations include photographs of the painter and his family as well as examples of his work.

When We Went to the Park

Shirley Hughes

A little girl and her grandpa count the things they see during a walk to the park.

Anthill

Petra Bartikova

Discover the facts about ants that will help kids gain respect for nature and lose any fear of these fascinating creatures.

The Honeybee

Kirsten Hall & Isabelle Arsenault

Illustrations and rhyming text follow endangered honeybees through the year as they forage for pollen and nectar, communicate with others at their hive, and make honey.

One Eagle Soaring

Roy Henry Vickers & Robert Budd

This simple story explores counting and numbers as the reader is introduced to West Coast animals.

Northwest Coast Native Animals

Kelly Robinson

Observations of animal behavior in their own habitat, by a Nuxalk illustrator.

Why Do We Need Bees?

Katie Daynes & Christine Pym

Why do we need bees? How do they make honey? And who’s who in a beehive? Children can find the answers to these questions and many more in this informative lift-the-flap book. With colourful illustrations, simple text and chunky flaps to lift, young children can discover lots of amazing facts about bees.

How Do Flowers Grow?

Katie Daynes & Christine Pym

This stylish, highly illustrated, interactive book is perfect for sharing with little children, and introduces nature and science using a friendly lift-the-flap format. A brilliant introduction to one of the fundamental themes of biology, perfect for curious young minds.

Pond Year

Kathryn Lasky & Mike Bostock

Two young girls enjoy playing and exploring in the nearby pond where they discover tadpoles, insects, wildflowers in the summer, and a place to ice skate in the winter.

Lawn Gone!

Pam Penick

Homeowners spend billions of hours—and dollars—watering, mowing, and maintaining their lawns. You don’t have to be one of them. Free yourself with Lawn Gone!, a colourful, accessible guide to the basics of replacing a traditional lawn with a wide variety of easy-care, no-mow, low-water, money-saving options. Whether you’re a beginner or expert gardener, green thumb or black, Lawn Gone! provides realistic choices, achievable plans, and simple instructions for renovating your yard from start to finish.

Backyard Blueprints

David Stevens & Jerry Harpur

Presented by a leading garden designer, this unique combination of down-to-earth advice and artistic ideas comes with eighteen detailed blueprint drawings to guide you, and breathtaking photographs to inspire. On display: an international array of inventive, exquisite garden solutions, from built-in barbecues and tree seats to rill waterfalls and arbors. Everything is demystified, from dividing the space to the last stages of planting.

Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates

Nora Harlow & Saxon Holt

With gentle and compelling text and stunning photographs, Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates is a guide to native and climate-adapted plants for summer-dry, winter-wet climates of North America’s Pacific coast. Knowing what these climates share and how and why they differ, you can choose to make gardens that maintain and expand local and regional biodiversity, take little from the earth that is not returned, and welcome and accommodate the presence of wildlife.

Gardening with Foliage First

Karen Chapman & Christina Salwitz

Although seductive, flowers, by their fleeting nature, are a fickle base to provide long-lasting gardens with year-round interest. Tackle this problem with the advice in Gardening with Foliage First. Learn how to first build a framework of foliage and then layer in flowers and other artistic elements as the finishing touches. This simple, recipe-style approach to garden design features 127 combinations for both sunny and shady gardens that work for a variety of climates and garden challenges.

The Water-Saving Garden

Pam Penick

The Water-Saving Garden provides a diverse array of techniques and plentiful inspiration for creating sustainable gardens that are so beautiful and inviting, it’s hard to believe they are water-thrifty. This accessible and contemporary xeriscaping guide is full of information on popular gardening topics like native and drought-tolerant plants (including succulents), rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, permeable paving, and more.

Sharp Gardening

Christopher Holliday

This book presents a careful selection of plants that are spiky, sharp, or brittle, whether in their stems, leaves, or flowers, so that gardeners can choose new and exciting plants that work well in their landscape. From xeriscapes to maritime gardens and everywhere in between, all adventurous plants-people will find fresh ideas for adding a little excitement to their garden.

Waterwise Plants for Sustainable Gardens

Lauren Springer Ogden & Scott Ogden

A practical guide to the best 200 plants guaranteed to thrive in low-water gardens. This inspiring guide includes a variety of plants, from trees to succulents, perennials to bulbs, all selected for their wide adaptability and ornamental value. Companion plants, creative design ideas, and full color photography make this guide a must-have resource for any sustainable gardener.

Tomorrow’s Garden

Stephen Orr

In Tomorrow’s Garden, Orr presents gardens in 14 American cities that have been scaled back and simplified without sacrificing beauty or innovative design. Orr advises gardeners to think about their gardens as part of an interconnected whole with the surrounding environment–with an eye to water usage, local ecology, and preservation of resources.

In the Woods

Emmano Cristini & Luigi Puricelli

Can you find all the creatures and plants that live in the woods?

You Are Light

Aaron Becker

Open this beautiful book to find a graphic yellow sun surrounded by a halo of bright die-cut circles. Now hold the page up to the light and enjoy the transformation as the colours in those circles glow. In an elegant, sparely narrated ode to the phenomenon of light, Aaron Becker follows as light reflects off the earth to warm our faces, draws up the sea to make the rain, feeds all the things that grow, and helps to create all the brilliant wonders of the world, including ourselves.

Have You Seen Birds?

Joanne Oppenheim & Barbara Reid

Spring, summer, autumn and winter birds; woodland, meadow, sea and marsh birds ― all are brought to life in lively, lyrical prose and rich Plasticine illustration. Colour and movement abound in every word and every detail, making each bird memorable.

Fresh Fall Leaves

Betsy Franco & Shari Halpern

Describes the many things one can do with fallen leaves…

The Nest

Brian Wildsmith

Two birds build a nest in the branches of a tree. But if it’s a tree, why is it moving?

The Apple Bird

Brian Wildsmith

There is nothing more that this hungry bird likes to eat than a plump, juicy apple. But eat too much, and even fat birds get full. This colourful, wordless book follows one bird’s apple feast.

I’m a Caterpillar

Jean Marzollo & Judith Moffatt

There’s more to a caterpillar than meets the eye.

I Am a Seed

Jean Marzollo & Judith Moffatt

A Hello Science Reader Level 1 book about two seeds, one who knows it’s a marigold and one who has no idea what it is.

I Am an Apple

Jean Marzollo & Judith Moffatt

It starts with a seed and grows. Apples are delicious and can be used to make many tasty things.

Daffodils for American Gardens

Brent Heath & Becky Heath

This is the first exhaustive text written on daffodils by and for North American gardeners. The detailed information has been garnered from decades of experience growing them and helping commercial and home growers find solutions for particular problems. Everything gardeners need to know about successfully raising this most popular perennial.

Questions? We would love to hear from you!

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Recent Acquisitions

Questions? We would love to hear from you!

Territory Acknowledgement