This book has been amazingly popular, and is now in its seventh printing. A comprehensive garden guide for south Florida, it features detailed information on 100 easy plants and 65 easy gardens. The author planted 2500 plants and tested them for 10 years to determine which are the easiest for the tough, south Florida environment. The focus is on beautiful plant material and gardens that require little water and simple care. Perennials that provide constant color are also featured. Garden design chapters cover small gardens, shade gardens, sun gardens, and garden style. With 371 great color photos, the book is designed to simplify and beautify south Florida gardens.

"This groundbreaking book shows beginners and experienced gardeners alike how to create gorgeous gardens with the easiest, colorful, low water plants the south has to offer. Learn about annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees that thrive with little or no irrigation and only require minutes of care per year - plants that can breeze through hot, humid, southern summers while attracting butterflies, birds and hummingbirds. Shop for plants like a pro by taking the book with you to garden centers and checking out the latest information on the newest plants around from people who have grown them! Create traffic-stopping color combinations from the over 150 easy examples shown. The book is extremely easy to follow, with thousands of color photographs, as well as many budget gardening tips. For Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, north Florida, and north and central Louisiana."--Publisher description

Can your Florida garden feed you in tough times? The answer is yes, and it's easier than you think. In this important new book from Florida gardening expert David the Good, you'll learn how to grow staple crops and provide your family with enough calories and nutrition to get through a crisis. Learn to beat weeds and pests, turn Florida sand into soil, garden with very few resources and provide your family with survival food without breaking the bank. Florida Survival Gardening is the culmination of decades of research on growing food in the Sunshine State. Discover the staple crops that will keep you full and the nutrient-dense plants that will keep you healthy. Stop worrying about uncertain supply lines and difficult times and plant a survival garden that will keep going through the year in Florida's unique climate. Step-by-step, you'll learn exactly how to grow a Florida garden that works with the climate and requires just hand tools to start and maintain in this illustrated guide that includes plans and survival crop suggestions for gardens in both the northern and southern halves of the state. Don't panic. You can do this. It's time to harvest the bounty Florida can provide.

In this revised and updated 2nd edition of Florida Gardener's Handbook, gardeners in the Sunshine State are handed all the know-how they'll need to grow a lush, productive garden. The environmentally sound growing info for both edible and ornamental plants found here is your green thumb map to success. With profiles of more than 300 plants proven to thrive in Florida's unique climate, including shrubs, trees, perennials, annuals, vegetables, fruits, tropical plants, lawn grasses, and more, you'll be able to select the best plants to create a beautiful landscape or a high-yielding edible garden. Helpful charts highlight sun and shade requirements and offer clear and concise plant variety information. Month-by-month care and cultivation guides are offered for each plant group, guiding your journey—even if you're a first-time Florida gardener. Authors Tom MacCubbin and Georgia B. Tasker, along with pro gardeners Robert Bowden and Joe Lamp'l, address the many challenges of Florida gardening, including a changing climate and saltwater gardening information. The how-to methods for planting, pruning, watering, fertilizing, and much more are rich with information essential to Floridians. This comprehensive and extensive guide is the best resource for growing in the Sunshine State. Whether you live in Nassau County, the Florida Keys, or somewhere in between, the Florida Gardener's Handbook has you covered. Florida Gardener's Handbook is part of the Gardener's Handbook series from Cool Springs Press. Other books in the series include Midwest Gardener's Handbook, Carolinas Gardener's Handbook, Northwest Gardener's Handbook, and many others.

When author Pamela Crawford first started writing her newest book, she expected it to be short, about 100 pages or so. After all, she pondered, how many different ways can you arrange plants in a pot? But, as she began her research, the book grew into a major 368-page reference book with a companion DVD movie! Obviously, there was a lot more to container gardening than she had originally thought! This project was begun to accomplish three goals. Ms. Crawford's first goal was to push the limits of container design - take it farther than she had ever seen it done in Florida. To accomplish this formidable task, she hit the road, traveling to areas where she knew container design was quite advanced. She ended up researching this project in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Long Island, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. Then, she searched Florida and spent time with experts who were doing great container work, like the staff at Universal Studios in Orlando and Sanchez and Maddux, landscape architects in Palm Beach. The designs shown in this book evolved from these experiences and illustrate a variety of styles of container gardening - from sleek, sophisticated interior containers (152-159) to country garden containers (pages 36-37).She spent time searching out the best suppliers for both plants and containers and brought many of their products to Florida to test them in the tough southern climate. Ms. Crawford and her assistants, Barbara Hadsell and Miguel Olivares, had fun testing over 10,000 plants and hundreds of containers in her gardens in Lake Worth. “We let our imaginations run wild with all these design ideas, plants, and spectacular pots. We are fortunate to have enough space to allow each container arrangement to grow to its maturity. This made it possible for us to report on its performance to you,” said Ms. Crawford.Her second goal was to develop a design system that is easy to understand for beginners. She shared that her first tries with gardening in containers produces a lot of problems as she learned how to design and plant containers from books. She bought book after book, and even after fallowing their instructions over and over again, most of the projects she attempted simply failed. It was at that point Ms. Crawford bought a video that taught her more in thirty minutes than she had learned in the previous ten years. At that moment, she knew that her book on container gardening had to have an accompanying DVD movie to make the learning process easy. She encourages her readers to “watch the DVD movie (sold separately) for thirty minutes and skim chapters 1, 2, and 15 in this book (include chapter 4 if you are ready to try a hanging basket). You will be ready to design and plant container gardens like the pros in no time at all!” The third goal of this book was to create a major reference work that people would keep for many years and refer to whenever they have a question about container gardening. So, Ms. Crawford made sure the book covered many different aspects of container gardening - like window boxes, wall pots, hanging baskets, diverse containers (for sun, salt, wind, shade, low water), planting and maintaining orchids, and how to use containers in the landscape. The book also covers many technical aspects of container gardening, like watering systems, soil, and fertilizer.The DVD movie is also a reference work. It covers container design basics plus three planting demos - a bowl, a hanging basket, and the planting and care of an orchid. Since the planting demos contain a lot of information, gardeners will benefit from re-watching them from time to time. The DVD movie is packaged in a box that fits right next to the book on a bookshelf.Researching this book opened up a whole new world to the author about the fun and satisfaction of container gardening. She comments that “I am so happy to share this great hobby with all of my Florida friends.”

Florida is home to an entire library of native plants that evolved to thrive in its range of climate regions. Native Plants for Florida Gardens profiles 100 Florida native wildflowers, shrubs, vines and trees that can transform typical Florida landscapes. Striking color photography showcases species and flowering characteristics. With the expertise of the Florida Wildlife Foundation, anyone can create lovely, low-maintenance gardens that will tolerate Florida’s roughest conditions, resist disease, and support biodiversity.

"Jim Stephens knows his vegetables. Follow his advice and you will have a successful, fruitful, pest-free garden--whether it is in a pot on your deck or a quarter-acre out back."--Marina Blomberg, garden editor, Gainesville Sun With full-color photographs and detailed expert advice, this affordable paperback describes how to grow abundant vegetables and edible herbs in gardens anywhere in Florida. Whether you're planting spring peas and sweet corn or crisp cucumbers and the dill you need to can them, Jim Stephens offers clear explanations of useful gardening terms and practices and joins popular growing concepts with the expertise of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Combining his personal background with decades of experience as Florida Cooperative Extension Service vegetable specialist, Stephens explains · types of gardens (including hydroponic and organic), · site selection, · vegetable variety selection, · garden establishment and care, · soil fertilization and management, · climatic implications, · cultivation practices, and · harvesting and storing. He also addresses the challenge of pests and diseases and includes a detailed and illustrated description of all the major and minor crops usually grown in Florida. And he doesn't overlook the basic, practical advice: thin the turnips, Stephens says; keep your tools sharp and clean; don't use lawn fertilizer on those vegetables. His guide will be indispensable to county agents, school teachers, garden writers, and anyone who enjoys a juicy, homegrown tomato. James M. Stephens is professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida and State Extension vegetable specialist in charge of educational programs for home gardeners. He was a founder of Florida's Master Gardener program, the Florida Urban Gardening program, and the Organic Gardening Research and Education Center at the University of Florida. He is the author of more than 300 publications and articles and more than 200 radio and television talks on gardening