Recent Acquisitions

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.

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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. 

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In the Woods

Emmano Cristini & Luigi Puricelli

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

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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.

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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.

Oasis in the City

Tara A. Blanc

The History of the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, planned for many years, dedicated in 1939.

Creepy Crawlies

Cathy Kilpatrick

Beautifully detailed, informative illustrations introduce the world of nature. Simple text encourages young children to read for themselves.

Leaf Hunter

Marie Claire La Flair

Have you ever found a leaf on the ground and wondered what kind of tree it fell from? The descriptions and drawings in this book will help you identify 23 different kinds of leaves.

Starting Life: Tree

Claire Llewellyn

Watch the pages grow as you discover the amazing life cycle of an apple tree, as the tiny seed grows into a sapling and then branches out into a huge, full-grown tree. As the seasons change, all sorts of creatures come and go, as the leaves grow, the beautiful blossom appears, and shiny red apples develop.

All Eyes on the Pond

Michael J. Rosen

Describes the things seen by the various animals that live in and around a pond, including a dragonfly, snapping turtle, spider, ant, snail, water strider, bat, crawdad, bluegill, frog, duck, and swallow.

Re-Cycles

Michael Elsohn Ross

Describes the cycle of soil decomposition and the water cycle, as well as how to develop a compost pile for recycling peapods and other garden products into compost to feed a garden.

When Emily was Small

Lauren Soloy

Once there was a girl who would grow up to be the artist Emily Carr. This is a story about when she was small. It’s a celebration of freedom, a playful romp through the garden and a contemplation of the mysteries of nature.

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Perennial Care Manual

Nancy J. Ondra

Keep your perennial beds looking their best, season after season. From planning and planting to pruning and propagating, this comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know to maintain a stunning perennial garden. Nancy J. Ondra provides an in-depth, plant-by-plant guide that profiles 125 popular perennials, with helpful information on each plant’s soil, light, and water needs.

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Complete Flower Gardener

Karan Davis Cutler & Barbara W. Ellis

This full-color guide shows you how to plan, plant, and maintain a beautiful flower garden using an environmentally responsible, organic approach. It offers authoritative guidance on creating borders and beds, combining flower colours and shapes, selecting gardening tools, and much more, and features encyclopedic Plant Portraits section with profiles of more than 175 flowers—annuals, perennials, and bulbs.

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Botanicum

Katie Scott & Kathy Willis

Botanicum is a brilliantly curated guide to plant life. It gives readers the experience of a fascinating exhibition from the pages of a beautiful book. From perennials to bulbs to tropical exotica, Botanicum is a wonderful feast of botanical knowledge complete with superb cross sections of how plants work.

Arboretum
Katie Scott & Tony Kirkham

This stunning new offering from the Welcome to the Museum series celebrates trees from around the world and sheds light on the vital role they play in maintaining a healthy, thriving planet. Featuring expert text from Tony Kirkham and stunning illustrations from Katie Scott, this volume introduces you to everything from trees associated with ancient mythology to the rarest and most unusual specimens. Meet mighty oaks, towering redwoods, and ancient gingkos as you trace the astounding complexities in a vast variety of trees

Climate-Wise Landscaping
Sue Reed & Jenny Stibolt

This book is the ideal tool for homeowners, gardeners, and landscape professionals who want to be part of the solution to climate change. Based on decades of experience, this book is packed with simple, practical steps anyone can take to beautify any landscape or garden, while helping protect the planet and the species that call it home.

Gardening the Mediterranean Way
Heidi Gildemeister

Heidi Gildemeister shares her wealth of knowledge in a lovely, inspirational volume that shows us how to create a lush garden in mediterranean-climate regions throughout the world. Her presentation of 20 dream gardens-among them an olive grove in bloom, a haven by the sea, and a scented shade garden, each with extensive plant lists and practical advice-is at the heart of her book, illustrated with more than 200 of her own, exquisite full-color photographs.

The Small Garden Handbook
Andrew Wilson

RHS Small Garden Handbook provides an all-in-one guide for small space gardeners and draws on the experience in growing, planting, landscaping and design for which the RHS is world famous. It begins by explaining how to assess your plot so that you are aware of the soil, orientation, microclimate, existing materials and proportions that you have to work with, before revealing the principles of good design. Showing how your decisions on layout, colour and texture will affect the finished design and what tricks can be played to create a greater sense of space, every gardener will gain confidence in creating a garden to enjoy no matter how big the plot.

The Less is More Garden
Susan Morrison

When it comes to gardens, bigger isn’t always better, and The Less Is More Garden shows you how to take advantage of every square foot of space. Designer Susan Morrison offers savvy tips to match your landscape to your lifestyle, draws on years of experience to recommend smart plants with seasonal interest, and suggests hardscape materials to personalize your space

What's Inside a Flower

Rachel Ignotofsky

Budding backyard scientists can start exploring their world with this stunning introduction to these flowery show-stoppers--from seeds to roots to blooms. Learning how flowers grow gives kids beautiful building blocks of science and inquiry.

In the launch of a new nonfiction picture book series, Rachel Ignotofsky's distinctive art style and engaging, informative text clearly answers any questions a child (or adult) could have about flowers.

Building Soils Naturally

Phil Nauta

Building Soils Naturally shows gardeners how to grow more nutritious food and have more healthy, pest-resistant flowers and ornamental plants.

Plants may be lacking in proper nutrition, missing beneficial microorganism companions, or short of energy to reach their full nutrient-dense potential.

The advice most often given is start with the soil, but what specific steps should gardeners do? Building Soils Naturally shows how to create productive, living soil using a simple, practical, hands-on plan.

Bompa's Insect Expedition

David Suzuki

It's time for the twins to go on a nature expedition with Bompa. What marvelous place will they explore this time? Tidepools at the sea? The pond full of frogs' eggs? Maybe deep in the forest? But to their disappointment, they are just exploring outside the door. Yet, as they begin to search for insects, they find world-champion flyers, eaters, and weightlifters. And more tiny surprises at every turn!

With their Bompa at their side, they find a way to recognize the amazing feats and important role of all insects. . . even the annoying ones!

Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt

Kate Messner

Explore the secret realm beneath the dirt that brings the world of nature to life: Follow a young girl and her grandmother on a journey through the year planning, planting, and harvesting their garden—and learn about what's happening in the dirt to help make it all happen. Up in the garden, the world is full of green—leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt exists a busy world—earthworms dig, snakes hunt, skunks burrow—populated by all the creatures that make a garden their home. These secrets and many others are waiting to be discovered up in the garden and down in the dirt in this sweet children's book.

When the Sakura Bloom

Narisa Togo

When the Sakura Bloom sheds light on the cultural significance of cherry blossom season in Japan, and an insight into the unique mindset of its people. Through subtle text and gentle imagery readers will see the importance of slowing down to appreciate the moment. That comfort, not despair, can be found in the inevitable cycles of the seasons. How change can usher in opportunities and rejuvenation.

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

Susan Herrington

In Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape, Susan Herrington draws upon archival research, site analyses, and numerous interviews with Oberlander and her collaborators to offer the first biography of this adventurous and influential landscape architect. For six decades she has practiced socially responsible and ecologically sensitive planning for public landscapes, including the 1970s design of the Robson Square landscape and its adjoining Provincial Law Courts, one of Vancouver's most famous spaces.

Heritage Apples

Susan Lundy

Heritage Apples travels far beyond the grocery store of today to savor the apples of the past. These are the apple varieties—the Gravensteins, the Kings, the red-fleshed Pink Pearl—that link us to history, but through food movements and taste preferences are remerging as the fruit of the future.

Discover the histories behind the apples. Identify the taste, appearance, and uses of 40 different heritage varieties and gain useful growing and harvesting information. Meet apple growers, cider-makers, and people fighting to preserve heritage apples, and join a lifestyle that embraces local and slow food movements.

Prick: Cacti and Succulents

Gynelle Leon

With their striking shapes and many different colors, cacti and succulents provide the perfect, low maintenance design accent for contemporary living spaces. Easy to care for, they also bring tranquillity and mindfulness.

Gynelle Leon founded London's first ever shop dedicated to cacti and succulents, called Prick. Here, with inspirational and achievable styling tips and advice, she shares her secrets to using these plants to transform your home. With profiles on the huge range of cactus varieties and information on caring for and styling your houseplants, this is the perfect guide to bringing the outdoors in.

Growing Berries and Fruit Trees in the Pacific Northwest

Tara Austen Weaver

A beautiful guide to growing delicious fruit in Pacific Northwest climates, complete with selection, planting, and organic care for more than 75 cultivars of berries and fruit trees, as well as 10+ master recipes with variations for preserving your bountiful harvest.

This complete guide to backyard fruit growing covers recommended varieties plus sidebars showcasing historical orchards, fruit enthusiast societies, gleaning organizations, and more.

Encyclopedia of Hardy Plants

Derek Fell

What is a hardy plant? What is a hardiness zone? What conditions affect hardiness? Gardening expert Derek Fell answers these and other questions of gardeners living in a temperate climate. He challenges strict adherence to the zone system and encourages readers to explore their garden's microclimates. Doing so can add two or three zones to a plant hardiness rating.

Encyclopedia of Hardy Plants is a comprehensive reference organized by plant type. Its easy-to-use directory format provides quick retrieval of specific data on over 700 recommended plants. It includes full color photographs of favorite annuals, bulbs, herbs, perennials, shrubs, trees, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

Apples of North America

Tom Burford

There is no better guide through this tasty world than Tom Burford, whose family has grown apples in the Blue Ridge Mountains since 1715. His celebratory book Apples of North America is brimming with beautiful portraits of heirloom and modern apples of merit, each accompanied by distinguishing characteristics and common uses. You will also find information on growing apples at home—with specifics on planting, pruning, grafting, and more—and instructions on how to preserve apples through pressing, fermenting, cooking, and drying.

Building Soil

Elizabeth Murphy

Let Building Soil answer your questions and be your guide on gardening from the ground up. Fertilizing, tilling, weed management, and irrigation all affect the quality of your soil. Using author Elizabeth Murphy's detailed instructions, anyone can become a successful soil-based gardener, whether you want to start a garden from scratch or improve an existing garden.

A soil-based approach allows you to see not just the plants, but the living system that grows them. Soil-building practices promote more ecologically friendly gardening by reducing fertilizer and pesticide use, sequestering greenhouse gases, and increasing overall garden productivity.

How to Grow Your Own Nuts

Martin Crawford

Filled with gorgeous illustrations of trees and nuts, How to Grow Your Own Nuts contains old favourites like hazelnuts and walnuts alongside less common varieties such as hickories and butternuts and the exotically named chinkapin.

This beautiful guide also features a handy A-Z, which details nut trees' many secondary uses from timber, oil, dyes, fodder and cosmetics to medicines and honey. Martin also discusses how the beautiful spring blossom is attractive to bees, particularly from almond and sweet chestnut trees, making them excellent for supporting pollinators.

Container Gardening for Canada

Peters, Beck & Williamson

Portland, OR : Timber Press

Container gardening is a flexible and fast-growing practice as popular with homeowners who want to accent a patio as it is with high-rise dwellers who want some greenery on their balcony. In Container Gardening for Canada, authors Peters, Beck and Williamson overview the best materials and practices for developing healthy container gardens, as well as reviews an array of plants and arrangements that do well in containers under prevailing Canadian conditions.

Latin For Gardeners

Lorraine Harrison

An essential addition to the gardener's library, this colorful, fully illustrated book details the history of naming plants, provides an overview of Latin naming conventions, and offers guidelines for pronunciation. Readers will learn to identify Latin terms that indicate the provenance of a given plant and provide clues to its color, shape, fragrance, taste, behavior, functions, and more.
Full of expert instruction and practical guidance, Latin for Gardeners will allow novices and green thumbs alike to better appreciate the seemingly esoteric names behind the plants they work with, and to expertly converse with fellow enthusiasts.

Attracting Native Pollinators

Xerces Society

North Adams, MA : Storey Publications

With the recent decline of the European honey bee, it is more important than ever to encourage the activity of other native pollinators to keep your flowers beautiful and your grains and produce plentiful. In Attracting Native Pollinators, you'll find ideas for building nesting structures and creating a welcoming habitat for an array of diverse pollinators that includes not only bees, but butterflies, moths, and more. Take action and protect North America's food supply for the future, while at the same time enjoying a happily bustling landscape.

Beauty by Design

Bill Terry & Rosemary Bates

Victoria, BC : TouchWood Editions

You may never look at a garden in the same way again. Though not a “how-to” book, Beauty By Design is a treasure trove of ideas and enchantment for seasoned gardeners and beginners alike. Eleven inspired artists of the garden share their stories, their secrets, and their passion for gardening. Landscape is the canvas. Foliage, flowers, rocks, water, and other bounties of nature are the materials. With plants, objects, art, and artifice, they create magical spaces, engage our senses, and summon forth pure delight.

Jekka's Complete Herb Book

Jekka McVicar

Vancouver, BC : Raincoast

This is a classic gardening bestseller with over 350 varieties of herb to grow and over 200 delicious and inventive recipes. It is a reference work bringing together all aspects of an individual herb - history and folklore, species to grow and cosmetic, medicinal and culinary uses. Chapters on propagation, harvesting and making herb oils are complemented with ideas for ten different designs for herb gardens and a unique yearly calendar.

Bee Time

Mark L. Winston

Cambridge : Harvard University Press

Being among bees is a full-body experience, Mark Winston writes―from the low hum of tens of thousands of insects and the pungent smell of honey and beeswax, to the sight of workers flying back and forth between flowers and the hive. The experience of an apiary slows our sense of time, heightens our awareness, and inspires awe. Bee Time presents Winston's reflections on three decades spent studying these creatures, and on the lessons they can teach about how humans might better interact with one another and the natural world.

Flora Mirabilis

Catherine Herbert Howell

Washington, DC : National Geographic

Flora Mirabilis is a sumptuously designed showcase of superb illustrations paired with fascinating stories of botanical exploration and trade through the ages. A collaboration between National Geographic and the world-renowned Missouri Botanical Garden, this book will prove an evergreen source of delight, not just for gardeners and flower aficionados, but for anyone interested in the plant world, human civilization, and their intertwined histories.

Herbarium

Barbara M. Thiers

Portland, OR : Timber Press

Herbarium is a fascinating enquiry into a unique field of plant biology, exploring how herbaria emerged and have changed over time, who promoted and contributed to them, and why they remain such an important source of data for their new role: understanding how the world's flora is changing. Barbara Thiers, director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, also explains how recent innovations that allow us to see things at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbaria specimens, helping us address some of the most critical problems facing the world today.

Sowing Beauty

James Hitchmough

Portland, OR : Timber Press

Using a distinct technique of sowing meadows from seed, James Hitchmough creates plant communities that mimic the dramatic beauty of natural meadows and offer a succession of blooms over many months—a technique that can be adapted to work in both large-scale public gardens and smaller residential gardens. Sowing Beauty shows you how to recreate his masterful, romantic style. You will learn how to design and sow seed mixes that include a range of plants, both native and exotic, and how to maintain the sown spaces over time. Color photographs show not only the gorgeous finished gardens, but also all the steps along the way.

Thank You, Tree

Fiona Lee

North Adams, MA : Storey Publishing

On every page of this beautiful board book, Fiona Lee's charming illustrations invite little ones to celebrate a wonderful tree, learn its name, and say thank you for the tree's joyful, natural gifts. From thanking a magnolia tree for its pink blossoms and a birch tree for a branch to swing on to thanking a maple tree for its colorful fall leaves and a cedar for a secret hiding place, this sweet book teaches the youngest readers to celebrates trees for their leaves, branches, flowers, fruits, and more.

What's Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?)

Deardorf & Wadsworth

Portland, OR : Timber Press

What's Wrong With My Plant? provides an easy system for visually diagnosing any garden plant problem and matching it to the right cure. By offering organic solutions for over 400 plant maladies, this book is the go-to source whenever your plants are a little under the weather. This innovative and easy-to-use guide presents easy-to-follow, illustrated flow charts to accurately diagnose the problem. It also includers 100% organic solutions and photographs and drawings of stressed, damaged, and diseased plants to help with accurate comparison.

Plant Technology of First Peoples in British Columbia

Nancy J. Turner

Victoria, BC : Royal BC Museum

Nancy Turner focuses on the plants that provided heat, shelter, transportation, clothing, clothing, nets, ropes, and containers -- the necessities of life for First Peoples in B.C. and adjacent territories. She also shows how plant materials were effectively used in many other ways, such as for decoration and ornamentation, as scents, cleansing agents, and insect repellents, and for recreational activities.

Over the millennia, the First Peoples have become highly skilled in the arts of working with plant materials. Turner describes more than 100 plants, their various uses and their importance in the material cultures of First Nations. Each description has a colour photograph of the plant to aid in its identification.

Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples

Nancy J. Turner

Victoria, BC : Royal BC Museum

As long as people have lived in North America, wild plants have been an important source of food. For Native people in western Canada, the nutritional and cultural contribution made by these plants was immense: in all, some 200 species of wild plants provided food. The different ways in which these were used resulted in an almost limitless selection of dishes derived from wild plants.

Held By The Land

Leigh Joseph

New York : Wellfleet Press

Author Leigh Joseph, an ethnobotanist and a member of the Squamish Nation, provides a beautifully illustrated essential introduction to Indigenous plant knowledge.

Plants can be a great source of healing as well as nourishment, and the practice of growing and harvesting from trees, flowering herbs, and other plants is a powerful way to become more connected to the land. The Indigenous Peoples of North America have long traditions of using native plants as medicine as well as for food. Held by the Land honors and shares some of these traditions, offering a guide to:

  • Harvesting herbs and other plants and using them topically
  • North American plants that can treat common ailments, add nutrition to your diet, become part of your beauty regime, and more
  • Stories and traditions about native plants from the author's Squamish culture
  • Using plant knowledge to strengthen your connection to the land you live on

Early chapters will introduce you to responsible ways to identify and harvest plants in your area and teach you how to grow a deeper connection with the land you live on through plants. In the plant profiles section, common plants are introduced with illustrations and information on their characteristics, range, how to grow and/or harvest them, and how to use them topically and as food. Special features offer recipes for food and beauty products along with stories and traditions around the plants.

Grow Your Own Spices

Tasha Greer

Beverly, MA : Cool Springs Press

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

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

In the pages of Grow Your Own Spices, you'll learn:

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

Drought Resistant Planting: Lessons From Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden

Beth Chatto

London, UK : Frances Lincoln

Legendary gardener and plantswoman Beth Chatto describes how she transformed a piece of wasteland into a lush and blooming garden in this beautiful book, filled with helpful tips and practical advice.

The story of how Beth Chatto created her gravel garden on 'possibly the driest, and the most windswept, piece of soil in England' has a message of hope for gardeners everywhere. At the outset she promised herself: 'This garden was not to be irrigated in times of drought. Once established the plants must fend for themselves or die.'

The results, eloquently described by the author and beautifully portrayed in Steven Wooster's specially commissioned photographs taken through the seasons, testify to the triumphant outcome of the adventure.

Showing how her principles can be applied on any scale, this book is an essential read for any gardener facing water shortages and poor soil. Rich with hard-won tips and expressed in Beth Chatto's matchless style, this is a gardening classic.

Gardener's Guide to Botany

Scott Zona
Beverly, MA : Cool Springs Press

*2023 American Horticultural Society Award Winner*

A Gardener's Guide to Botany is not just another book on how to grow plants. Instead, it's a lushly illustrated botanical journey into what makes plants tick, delivered in layman's terms that are easily understood and appreciated by both advanced gardeners and first-timers. It's the chlorophyll-infused science behind the plants you know and love, whether you grow them indoors or out.

You'll learn how different plant parts function (do you know what stomata are and why every leaf has hundreds of them?), the traits that separate plants from animals, and how through eons of evolution the plants we grow in our gardens and homes have developed a million different fascinating adaptations that allow them to survive and thrive. From their leaf shape and growth habit to how they have sex and metabolize the nutrients they absorb, A Gardener's Guide to Botany covers it all in an accessible and thought-provoking way.

Botanical Art Techniques

American Society of Botanical Artists
Portland, OR : Timber Press

This definitive guide is the most thorough how-to available on every major technique of botanical artistry. The experts at the American Society of Botanical Artists offer step-by-step projects that move from introductory to advanced—so any level of artist can build on acquired skills. Helpful tutorials cover watercolor, graphite, colored pencil, vellum, egg tempera, oils, pen and ink, and printmaking. Filled with more than 900 photographs and stunning examples of finished art by the best contemporary botanical artists, Botanical Art Techniques is the authoritative manual on this exquisite art form.