The Top Garden Tip Books

1,001 Old-Time Garden Tips Timeless Bits of Wisdom on How to Grow Everything Organically, from the Good Old Days When Everyone Did Old-time gardeners were ahead of their time! Their ideas for wildflower gardens, children's gardens, organic pest controls, decorating with houseplants, healing with herbs, and more are at the forefront of modern gardening trends. Take a look back to the future of gardening with this incredible collection of gardening advice from successful 17th-, 18th-, 19th-, and early 20th-century gardeners. Early gardeners knew what they were doing--they had to, since they depended on their plants for food, medicine, home decorations, and recreation! Whether you're growing vegetables, flowers, herbs, fruits, trees, shrubs, wildflowers, houseplants, or lawn grass, these old-time tips will help you get the most out of your plantings. Do you want a lusher lawn? How about more beautiful flowerbeds or hints for making your yard look bigger? You'll find all that and more in 1,001 Old-Time Garden Tips. Learn how to read weather signs, improve your soil organically, hide landscape eyesores with ease, decorate your home with flowering vines, and soothe sore joints with herbal remedies. Discover creative ways to landscape your home with fanciful topiary tree houses or practical hedges and windbreaks. From fruits to nuts and artichokes to watermelons, you'll find recommendations for healthier harvests--not to mention recipes for unique and tasty side dishes, drinks, and herbal seasonings. Plus: hundreds of organic techniques that have been proven effective by generations of great gardeners! Look for these special features and more: * "Old-Time Wisdom" boxes present early gardeners' best planting notions. * Tried-and-true recipes from early kitchens will tickle your tastebuds. * "Strange but True" boxes reveal weird, wacky, and wonderful gardening techniques. * A source list makes it easy to locate wonderful old-time plants. * Authentic old-time illustrations take you back to a time when garden tips were on everyone's lips. * A "Recommended Reading" list guides you to more great ideas from the past.

Whether you have a charming container garden or an elegant topiary, this oversized, 448-page, photo-packed guide explodes with 1,000 practical tips on making it bloom more beautifully with less effort and time. From water gardens to roof havens, a staggering variety of design and planting choices burst from the pages.

Susie Coelho's down-to-earth personality and practical smarts about bringing beauty to life have won her millions of fans. Now, in "Susie Coelho's Everyday Styling," she offers a liberating plan for infusing personal style into readers' home and gardens, often without spending a dime. Susie's credo is that the most appealing spaces are usually not the most expensive or decorator-correct. Homes develop authentic personal styles the same way people do -- through creativity, change, and the process of living. But how do you develop your own sense of style? Susie will show you how to find it, define it, and put it to use. The secret is the Style File: She'll help you create a collection of looks you love (pictures, swatches of material, scribbled ideas), organized as a practical reference for every space in your home and garden. As you discover common threads and new possibilities, your own vision will start to take shape. But do you have the time or the resources to bring this vision to life? As a wife and mother juggling the demands of family, career, social life, and community, Susie understands the obstacles -- and how to work around them. The aim is to start with what you already have, then rearrange, refresh, and add unexpected or missing elements to create a new look all your own. It's not formal decorating or landscaping according to someone else's rules; it's a personal process that Susie calls "un-decorating" -- or everyday styling. Filled with gorgeous color photographs, styling how-to's and tips, and lots of inspiration, "Everyday Styling" helps readers on any budget wake up their homes and gardens while putting their unique thumbprint on everything they do. You'll beable to create a whole new look and mood -- using pillows or fabric to jazz up old furniture, displaying and highlighting favorite possessions, or redoing a living room in three different ways -- all in one day. Moving outside, Susie offers tips on styling entrances according to the season, creating fantastic outdoor rooms for entertaining or play, and turning your yard into a garden of earthly delights. At every step, she helps you develop and draw on your most important resources -- your own imagination, creativity, and passion for living. Whether you're entertaining friends, hankering for a new perspective on that same old bedroom, or just hoping to perk up your patio with colorful plants, "Susie Coelho's Everyday Styling" shows how easy it is to keep you home and garden looking and feeling fresh and alive every day. Her message is simple but universal: Keep creating. That's the joy of life.

"This book is our most helpful resource on pest control. It's the first book we turn to for solutions."--Terry Gips, President, International Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture"Every year, we review hundreds of books on how to manage soils and pests organically and how to reduce the use of toxic materials. We're excited at the quality and completeness of The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control and recommend it to our clients."--Bill Wolf, President, Necessary Trading Company, New Castle, Virginia

"A skilled gardener and teacher, Miranda Smith knows her subject well, writes about it easily, and obviously enjoys the special charms of herbs. She conveys all this in Your Backyard Herb Garden. Her no-nonsense advice on soil building, fertilizing, pest control, and watering is pure gold. She also covers harvesting and using herbs in teas, vinegars, cosmetics, potpourris, crafts, and more. Do try Miranda's rose geranium jelly!"--Bertha Reppert, author of Growing Your Herb Business and Herbs with Confidence, and herbarist in residence at The Rosemary House, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
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