Thirty years ago journalist Joan Marble and her sculptor husband, Robert Cook, bought an unpromising piece of land near the little hamlet of Canale, north of Rome where the ancient Etruscans once lived. Here they built a house and, more important, set out to start a wonderful garden. All was not easy, however. They faced blank incomprehension from the local inhabitants. "Why do you want to have a garden here?" they were asked. "There's no water, the ground is like cement, it's too cold in winter and too hot in summer, it never rains. . . ." But Joan and Robert's enthusiasm for the land, their ignorance of the obstacles that faced them, their downright obstinacy and the unexpected friends who helped them -- all served to conquer the intransigent terrain. "I fell in love with Etruria one chilly evening in the middle of winter," says Joan. "They were having a New Year's Eve festival in a little town near Campagnano, and a group of local boys dressed in Renaissance costumes were marching in a torchlight parade down the main street. As I stood there in the cold watching the flames lurching to the sky, I realized that I felt very much at home in this ancient place. If ever we should decide to move to the country, this was the kind of place I would choose....." Inspirational, aspirational, enchanting -- this is an account of a passion for a place and an obsession with a garden that will charm all who love Italy, gardening, and life.

“A Way to Garden prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she calls “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener.

A hands-on gardener, Henry Homeyer gives practical advice on how to garden, whether building a hot box, transplanting peonies, defeating the deer, growing ladyslipper orchids and shiitake mushrooms, or keeping the birds out of the berry bushes. Each month covers a range of topics relevant to the season: starting seedlings, edging and mulching, gardening with children, getting rid of invasive plants, pruning , planting shrubs for attracting and feeding birds, putting the garden to bed, growing houseplants, . . . These are just a few of Homeyer's 69 short "reflections and observations" on matters of interest to amateur, dedicated, and armchair gardeners alike. Homeyer grew up in the 1950s learning about organic gardening from a grandfather who used manure tea and compost, not 10-10-10, herbicides, and DDT. For him, organic gardening is not a political position, but a common sense approach to having the best soil and the healthiest plants. Of special relevance to denizens of zones 3-5, the climatic belt which includes New England and runs across southern Canada and west to the Rockies, each of the twelve chapters (one for each month) contains several pieces combining technical information, practical tips, personal reflections, and more than a little humor. An unusual feature is Homeyer's interviews with other gardeners. Meet Joe Mooney, the aging wizard of turf at Fenway Park. Spend an afternoon in the garden with Jamaica Kincaid. Visit Jean and Wes Cate, growers of heirloom vegetables at Fox Run Farm. Learn more about the White House gardens from chief horticulturist Dale Haney. Or marvel at Marguerite Tewksbury, an 85-year-old organic gardener who single-handedly runs a farm stand, drives her 1950 Ford Ferguson tractor, and weeds her 6,000-square-foot vegetable patch with a full-sized rototiller. "She doesn't say that keeping active and eating organically keeps her healthy and vigorous, but I have a feeling that it does," writes Homeyer.

""I'm not dead yet, writes Clare Hastings to her daughter, Calypso, who will one day inherit Clare's beloved cottage garden in the Berkshire Downs. In fact I woke up this morning feeling quite chipper. I glanced out of the window and thought about you. And felt a frisson of panic. What if I were to be struck down before elevenses on the B4009? I realised that I needed to leave you a handbook about the garden. For you the countryside is a pathway from the car ark to the door, to be completed on the run. But I'm not giving up." The daughter of writer and gardener Anne Scott-James, Clare too was a latecomer to gardening, daunted by Latin names and nervous around plants. Then she realised she wasn't and never would be a 'proper plantsman' and that it didn't matter. Since then she has explored the joys of gardening, finding that a garden is just like life. There are moments when you want to divorce it and other times you can sit alongside it forever. Clare acknowledges that most - though not all - of what she has learned about gardening came from her mother. In Gardening Letters to my Daughter, published in 1990, Anne imparted some of her vast knowledge of gardening to Clare, who occasionally contributed a response. Now, after many years' experience of her own cottage garden, Clare shares her gardening life notes with Calypso. This is a delightful book, full of insight and humour, as well as practical information for newcomers to gardening. A gift for garden lovers young and old." -- Provided by publisher.

ALA Best Book for Young Adults ∙ School Library Journal Best Book ∙ Publishers Weekly Best Book ∙ IRA/CBC Children's Choice ∙ NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts A Vietnamese girl plants six lima beans in a Cleveland vacant lot. Looking down on the immigrant-filled neighborhood, a Romanian woman watches suspiciously. A school janitor gets involved, then a Guatemalan family. Then muscle-bound Curtis, trying to win back Lateesha. Pregnant Maricela. Amir from India. A sense of community sprouts and spreads. Newbery-winning author Paul Fleischman uses thirteen speakers to bring to life a community garden's founding and first year. The book's short length, diverse cast, and suitability for adults as well as children have led it to be used in countless one-book reads in schools and in cities across the country. Seedfolks has been drawn upon to teach tolerance, read in ESL classes, promoted by urban gardeners, and performed in schools and on stages from South Africa to Broadway. The book's many tributaries—from the author's immigrant grandfather to his adoption of two brothers from Mexico—are detailed in his forthcoming memoir, No Map, Great Trip: A Young Writer's Road to Page One. "The size of this slim volume belies the profound message of hope it contains." —Christian Science Monitor And don’t miss Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, the Newbery Medal-winning poetry collection!

This charming guide gathers together writings on all aspects of British gardening, from the nineteenth century plant hunters such as 'China' Wilson and the Veitches, who brought seeds and specimens from every corner of the world, to the designers such as Capability Brown and Gertrude Jekyll, who set their mark on gardening styles. In pieces written by the paper's stellar list of gardening correspondents - Vita Sackville-West, Penelope Hobhouse, Monty Don, Carol Klein, not to mention Christopher Lloyd, the grand old man of British gardening - it explores our dedication to the growing garden. And, with stories about the restoration of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, the building of the great glasshouses at Chatsworth, and the preservation work carried out a Kew, it paints a picture of how history can be unearthed through gardening and emphasises how important it is to preserve our green-fingered heritage. Coming right up to the present day with pieces on the advances at the Eden project, Notes on the Garden is the perfect bedside companion for anyone who loves the feeling of soil between their fingers.

In 1925 Harold Ross hired Katharine Sergeant Angell as a manuscript reader for The New Yorker. Within months she became the magazine’s first fiction editor, discovering and championing the work of Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, James Thurber, Marianne Moore, and her husband-to-be, E. B. White, among others. After years of cultivating fiction, White set her sights on a new genre: garden writing. On March 1, 1958, The New Yorker ran a column entitled “Onward and Upward in the Garden,” a critical review of garden catalogs, in which White extolled the writings of “seedmen and nurserymen,” those unsung authors who produced her “favorite reading matter.” Thirteen more columns followed, exploring the history and literature of gardens, flower arranging, herbalists, and developments in gardening. Two years after her death in 1977, E. B. White collected and published the series, with a fond introduction. The result is this sharp-eyed appreciation of the green world of growing things, of the aesthetic pleasures of gardens and garden writing, and of the dreams that gardens inspire.