The Urban Vegetable Patch is an eco-friendly guide to growing green, no matter your space. Starting with how to set-up your own vegetable patch up – be it on a windowsill, a balcony or even an allotment – you will learn how to make the most of your space, whatever the size. From how to grow vegetables organically – be it from seed or even food scraps – to making your own fertiliser, as well as practical tips on how to cook, store and share your haul, reduce your use of plastics and water, and even how to plant for wildlife, this book will inspire you to grow your way to greener way of living – so dig in!

From eliminating urban pollution in your garden to growing the most beautiful edible plants in your limited outside space, this book is aimed at anyone who doesn't have the luxury of a country garden. This book shows how to get the best soil, gives advice on garden design and supplies recipes which highlight the taste of the food you grow. The plant directory also advises upon the most suitable varieties of crop to grow in very small numbers. Whatever your garden space, be it a window box or a roof terrace, an allotment or a back garden, this book aims to show you how to turn it into a productive Eden all year round.

Forget the 100-mile eat-local diet; try the 300-square-foot-diet &— grow squash on the windowsill, flowers in the planter box, or corn in a parking strip. Apartment Gardening details how to start a garden in the heart of the city. From building a window box to planting seeds in jars on the counter, every space is plantable, and this book reveals that the DIY future is now by providing hands-on, accessible advice. Amy Pennington's friendly voice paired with Kate Bingham-Burt's crafty illustrations make greener living an accessible reality, even if readers have only a few hundred square feet and two windowsills. Save money by planting the same things available at the grocery store, and create an eccentric garden right in the heart of any living space.

"The social history of American cities would not be complete without a full account of the rise of community open spaces. Lawson does exactly this by providing a compelling and poetic account of the history and making of urban gardens. Combining solid scholarship with engaging images of the gardens and stories of their makers, this book sheds new light on the value of urban open space. More important, it explains why community gardens need to stand alongside city parks as permanent open spaces. Essential reading for community developers and landscape architects as well as anyone who ventures outside, enthusiasm and shovel in hand, to improve their local environment.—Mark Francis, author of Urban Open Space and Village Homes "The definitive history of the past hundred years of America's experience with community gardens. A labor of love by a garden activist, the book appears at a most appropriate time—today our city dwellers and suburbanites are retreating onto carpets of passive open space tended by homeowner associations and lawn care outfits. Lawson thoughtfully analyzes the weaknesses of community gardens when used as a response to social crises and, by contrast, investigates community gardens as an alternative to today's managed care of open space. Her history clearly presents a way of community living that we can elect if we choose her wisdom."—Sam Bass Warner, Jr, author of To Dwell Is to Garden "An important book about how the urban gardening movement is transforming our landscape and reconnecting us to the land."—Alice Waters, Owner, Chez Panisse

A few years ago, Naomi Schillinger got together with her neighbours to start a community gardening scheme. Today, they live in a street in which no less than 100 residents have turned their front gardens over to growing their own fruit and veg: lettuces, leeks and beetroot in raised beds, teepees billowing with sweet peas and runner beans, rhubarb by the door. Whether you live in a rented flat with a window box, a house with a front garden if you have access to a bit of pavement or decide to reclaim some unloved or forgotten corner there will be ideas in this book which will encourage you to have a go at growing your own fruit and veg (and flowers) throughout the year; and, in so doing, create your own mini Eden.

'Excellent book.' Nigella Lawson 'Charming, inspiring, uplifting... pure lovely.' Marian Keyes 'Read Rhapsody in Green. A novelist's beautiful, useful essays about her tiny garden.' India Knight 'Glorious...for anyone who loves fruit, vegetables, herbs and language. It makes you see them with new eyes.' Diana Henry 'A witty account of 'extreme allotmenteering' for all obsessive gardeners' Mail on Sunday 'An extremely entertaining and inspiring story of one woman's passionate transformation of a small, irregular shaped urban garden into a bountiful source of food.' Woman & Home 'A gardening book like no other, this is the author's 'love letter' to her garden. She relays warm and witty stories about the trials and tribulations throughout her gardening year.' Garden News '...this inspirational, funny book, written by someone who hankers after a homesteader's lifestyle, will make you look at even your window box in a new, more productive light.' The Simple Things 'Gardening is not a hobby but a passion: a mess of excitement and compulsion and urgency and desire. Those who practise it are botanists, evangelists, freedom fighters, midwives and saboteurs; we kill; we bleed. No, I can't drop everything to come in for dinner; it's a matter of life and death out here.' Novelist Charlotte Mendelson has a secret life. Despite owning only six square metres of urban soil and a few pots, she is an extreme gardener; the creator of a tiny but bountiful edible jungle. And like all enthusiasts, she will not rest until you share her obsession. This is the story of an amateur gardener's journey to addiction: her attempts to buy lion dung from London Zoo and to build her own cold frame; her disinhibited composting and creative approach to design; her prejudices (roses, purple flowers, people with orchards); and her passions: quinces, salad-leaves, herbs, Japanese greens and ancient British apples. It is a story of where fantasy meets reality, of the slow onset of a consuming love and, most of all, of how gardening, however peculiar, can save your life.