A lovely summer turns into a time of terror when England's green and leafy gardens take vengeance on their keepers.

A “beautifully illustrated memoir, a deeply personal remembrance about the navigation into adulthood and the plants along the way. Touching and relatable.” (Lori Roberts, author of A Life of Gratitude) From Katie Vaz, author of Don’t Worry, Eat Cake, the beloved Make Yourself Cozy, and The Escape Manual for Introverts, comes My Life in Plants. Her newest book tells the story of her life through the thirty-nine plants that have played both leading and supporting roles, from her childhood to her wedding day. Plants include a homegrown wildflower bouquet wrapped in duct tape that she carried on stage at age three, to a fragrant basil plant that brought her and her kitchen back to life after grief. The stories are personal, poignant, heartwarming, and relatable, and will prompt readers to recall plants of their own that have been witness to both the amazing moments of life and the ordinary ones. This illustrated memoir covers the simplicity of home, the sharpness of loss, the lesson of learning to be present, and the journey of finding your way

What if there was a way of eating that may help us live healthier for longer and protect the future of our planet, too? The good news is that evidence now shows a plant-based diet may offer us exactly that – and straight-talking nutritionist Simon Hill has done the hard work translating the science into actionable advice for everyday life. Before transitioning to a plant-based diet Simon held many of the common misconceptions. But instead he experienced incredible improvements in his energy levels, digestion, mental clarity and post-workout recovery after making the shift. He’d finally understood the power of food and was determined to find out – and share – the agenda-free truth about the optimum diet for human health. By undertaking a master’s degree in nutrition, poring over the latest scientific papers and books, and producing hundreds of hours of his internationally successful Plant Proof podcast, Simon has pursued the answers to all the questions he had about fuelling our bodies with more plants. Now, in his first book, he brings it all together into one inspiring and practical guide. It covers: – The reasons why we’re all so confused about what to eat – The evidence showing how a plant-based diet might reduce risks of heart attacks and strokes, type 2 diabetes, cancer and dementia – The positive impact of plant-based living for the climate and animal welfare – Common myths about a plant-based diet – and what the real facts are – How to build a healthy, satisfying plant-based plate, from macronutrients to micronutrients – Practical tips for making the shift, and much more. If you want to understand and unlock the many benefits of putting more plants on your plate, this book is for you.

In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. Once the terrain of anthropologists, it is now the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs, while ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin. Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about--what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.

The founder of Wild Food Adventures presents the definitive, fully illustrated guide to foraging and preparing wild edible greens. Beyond the confines of our well-tended vegetable gardens, there is a wide variety of fresh foods growing in our yards, neighborhoods, or local woods. All that’s needed to take advantage of this wild bounty is a little knowledge and a sense of adventure. In Edible Wild Plants, wild foods expert John Kallas covers easy-to-identify plants commonly found across North America. The extensive information on each plant includes a full pictorial guide, recipes, and more. This volume covers four types of wild greens: Foundation Greens: wild spinach, chickweed, mallow, and purslane Tart Greens: curlydock, sheep sorrel, and wood sorrel Pungent Greens: wild mustard, wintercress, garlic mustard, and shepherd’s purse Bitter Greens: dandelion, cat’s ear, sow thistle, and nipplewort

Let the experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens guide you around the beautiful and mysterious world that is the plant kingdom. From regulating the air we breathe to providing food, clothes, fuels, and medicines - plants are fundamental to our lives. Discover an extraordinary diversity of species, which includes a grass that grows a meter a day, roots that breathe air, and "queen of the night" cactuses whose rare blooms vanish before dawn. In a combination of art and science, Flora celebrates plants from majestic trees to microscopic algae, explaining how they germinate, grow, and reproduce. It presents species that have evolved to accommodate pollinating insects such as the foxglove, and plants that have adapted to flourish in even the most hostile of habitats. Pierre-Joseph Redoute in the 18th-century was described as the "Raphael of flowers". Flora showcases his botanical paintings as well as those of Georg Ehret and others in this gorgeous visual celebration of plants through the ages. Whether you are a keen gardener, naturalist, or botany student, this beautiful book is a treat that will entice, inform, and amaze.

Covert Plants contributes to newly emerging discourses on the implications of vegetal life for the arts and culture. This stretches to changes in our perception of 'nature' and to the adapting roles of botany, evolutionary ecology, and environmental aesthetics in the humanities. Its editors and contributors seek various expressions of vegetal life rather than the mere representation of such, and they proceed from the conviction that a rigorous approach to thinking with and through vegetal life must be interdisciplinary. At a time when urgent calls for restorative care and reparative action have been sounded for the environment, this essay volume presents a range of academic and creative perspectives, from evolutionary biology to literary theory, philosophy to poetry, which respond to the perplexing problems and paradoxes of vegetal thinking. Representations of vegetal life often include plant analogies and plant imagery. These representations have at times obscured the diversity of plant behavior and experience. Covert Plants probes the implications of vegetal life for thought and how new plant science is changing our perception of the vegetal - around us and in us. How can we think, speak, and write about plant life without falling into human-nature dyads, or without tumbling into reductive theoretical notions about the always complex relations between cognition and action, identity and value, subject and object? A full view of this shifting perspective requires a 'stereoscopic' lens through which to view plants, but also simultaneously to alter our human-centered viewpoint. Plants are no longer the passive object of contemplation, but are increasingly resembling 'subjects, ' 'stakeholders, ' or 'actors.' As such, the plant now makes unprecedented demands upon the nature of contemplation itself. Moreover, the aesthetic, political, and legal implications of new knowledge regarding plants' ability to communicate, sense, and learn require intensive, cross-disciplinary investigation. By doing this, we can intervene into current attitudes to climate change and sustainability, and hopefully revise, for the better, human philosophies, ethics, and aesthetics that touch upon plant life. TABLE OF CONTENTS// Baylee Brits and Prudence Gibson, "Introduction: Covert Plants" - Prudence Gibson and Michael Marder, "Art Expresses Its Own Appearance: A Conversation with Michael Marder" - Prudence Gibson, "The Colour Green" - Baylee Brits, "Brain Trees: Neuroscientific Metaphor and Botanical Thought" - Dalia Nassar, "Metaphoric Plants: Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants and the Metaphors of Reason" - Stephen Muecke, "Mixed up with Trees: The Gadgur and the Dreaming" - Monica Gagliano, "Eco-psychology and the Return to the Dream of Nature" - Suzanne Anker, "The Blue Rose" - Susie Pratt, "Trees as Landlords and Other Public Experiments: An Interview with Natalie Jeremijenko" - Tessa Laird, "Spores from Space: Becoming the Alien" - Jennifer Mae Hamilton, "Gardening After the Anthropocene: Creating Different Relations between Humans and Edible Plants in Sydney" - Lucas Ihlein, "Agricultural Inventiveness: Beyond Environmental Management?" - Andrew Belletty, "An Ear to the Ground" - Ben Woodard, "Continuous Green Abstraction: Embodied Knowledge, Intuition, and Metaphor" - Lisa Dowdall, "Figures" - Poems by Luke Fischer, Justin Clemens, Paul Dawson, and Tamryn Bennett.