Butterflies Through Binoculars
The East (Butterflies Through Binoculars Series)
by Jeffrey Glassberg

This magnificent field guide is the latest addition to the exciting series that is revolutionizing the way we look at butterflies. Greatly expanding on Butterflies Through Binoculars: The Boston-New York-Washington Region--identified by Defenders of Wildlife Magazine as "the first to focus on netless butterflying" and called " a clear winner" by the Audubon Naturalist--Glassberg here shows us how to find, identify, and enjoy all of the butterflies native to the eastern half of the United States and southeastern Canada. This guide:
*Combines the immediacy and vividness of actual photographs of living butterflies with the traditional field guide format
*Emphasizes conservation over collection
*Includes 630 color photographs, arranged on 72 color plates, of butterflies in the wild
*Provides adjacent color maps that show where each species occurs in a given locality and for how much of the year
*Supplies entirely new field marks for butterfly identification
*Demonstrates how to identify subjects by way of the key characteristics butterflies are likely to display in their natural settings
*Shows how species can be recognized both from above and below
*Explains how to differentiate between males and females.

For butterfly enthusiasts, for bird watchers who want to add a new dimension to their hobby, for anyone who is simply interested in exploring the wilds of their own back yard, this new field guide offers hours of delightful help and instruction.
 

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Butterfly Gardens
Luring Nature's Loveliest Pollinators to Your Yard
by Alcinda C. Lewis

Detailed, practical information on dozens of butterflies—all spectacularly illustrated in color—plus an encyclopedia of the best plants for attracting these beautiful pollinators to your garden. 
 

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Composting
An Easy Household Guide
by Nicky Scott

Did you know that up to two-thirds of most household trash can be composted? That composting reduces the need for more landfills? Composting is fun and easy! And you can make compost even if you live in an apartment and don't have access to a garden. This book provides all the information you need for successful composting--a satisfying way to live lightly on Earth.
 

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Defiant Gardens
Making Gardens in Wartime
by Kenneth Helphand

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gardens that ignored the rules of nature and gardeners who challenged the laws of man are vitally united in Helphand's seminal and revelatory study of life during some of the most lethal conflicts of the twentieth century. From the torturous 475-mile trench line that formed the western front in World War I to the alien landscapes of the Japanese American internment camps in the U.S. during World War II, the sites of unfathomable human brutality also gave rise to acts of uplifting horticultural resistance. Whether they were subsistence vegetable beds improbably tilled beneath barbed wire fences in Nazi-created ghettos or symbolic topiaries artistically carved from brittle desert sagebrush, each audacious example bears solemn testimony to the assertive efforts of determined soldiers, POWs, Holocaust victims, and others to vanquish war's horrors through the spiritually ennobling act of gardening. Helphand's extensively researched history of gardens in wartime illuminates the grotesque juxtaposition of willful devastation and the astonishing tenacity required to create life in the face of death.

Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
 

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The Earth Knows My Name
Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America
by Patricia Klindienst

From Booklist
Klindienst celebrates gardens created by immigrants who resisted the intense pressure to assimilate into mainstream American society, in a lyrical account of her three-year journey to collect the stories of ethnic Americans for whom gardening is tantamount to cultural endurance. Survivors of the Pol Pot regime fled the killing fields of Cambodia for the healing fields of New England, while the Yankee inheritor of land wrested generations ago from Native Americans during the infamous Pequot Massacre of 1637 atones for that atrocity through the simple act of sharing seeds of corn with the tribe's descendants. Klindienst profiles 15 valiant and thoughtful gardeners intent on preserving their native birthright and on restoring and protecting their adopted land, individuals and families evincing a stewardship that not only resists cultural absorption but also sustains an ecological imperative. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
 

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Edible Estates:
Attack On The Front Lawn
by Fritz Haeg, Diana Balmori, and Will Allen

Since the first edition of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn was published in 2008, interest in edible gardening has exploded across the United States and abroad. Even First Lady Michelle Obama is doing it! This greatly expanded second edition of the book documents the eight Edible Estates regional prototype gardens that author Fritz Haeg has planted in California, Kansas, Texas, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and England, and includes personal accounts from the homeowner-gardeners about the pleasures and challenges of publicly growing food where they live. Ten "Reports from Coast to Coast" tell the stories of others who have planted their own edible front yards in towns and cities across the country. In addition to essays by renowned landscape architect and scholar Diana Balmori, edible-landscaping pioneer Rosalind Creasy, bestselling author and sustainable-food advocate Michael Pollan and artist and writer Lesley Stern, this edition features updated text by Haeg (including his observations on the Obama White House vegetable garden); a contribution from Mannahatta author Eric W. Sanderson; and Growing Power founder, MacArthur Fellow and urban farmer Will Allen's never-before-published Declaration of the Good Food Revolution. This is not a comprehensive how-to book, nor a showcase of impossibly perfect gardens. The stories presented here are intended to reveal something about how we are living today and to inspire readers to plant their own versions of an Edible Estate. If we see that our neighbor's typical grassy lawn instead can be a beautiful food garden, perhaps we will begin to look at the city around us with new eyes. Our private land can be a public model for the world in which we would like to live.

 

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The Edible Front Yard
The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan For A Beautiful Bountiful Garden
by Ivette Soler

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Fields That Dream
A Journey to the Roots of Our Food
by Jenny Kurzweil (Author)

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 21, 2005
Engaging and informative look at the small farmers who grow and sell their foodstuffs at this city's beloved Farmers Market.

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Florida Butterfly Caterpillars and Their Host Plants
by Marc C. Minno, Jerry F. Butler, and Donald W. Hall  

This book will become the classic guide to southern butterfly caterpillars and their host plants.
With hundreds of color photographs and concise information in a format that can easily be carried into the field, it offers an unprecedented tool for all butterfly gardeners, teachers, naturalists, students, and scientists in the southern United States.

No other book offers such a comprehensive discussion of Florida butterfly caterpillars and their host plants. It covers caterpillar anatomy, biology, ecology, habitat, behavior, and defense, as well as how to find, identify, and raise caterpillars. The book contains sharply detailed photos of 167 species of caterpillars, 185 plants, 18 life cycles, and 19 habitats. It includes 169 maps. Photos of the egg, larva, pupa, and adult of representatives of 18 butterfly families and subfamilies provide life cycle comparisons that have never been illustrated before in such an accessible reference.

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Florida Butterfly Gardening
A Complete Guide to Attracting, Identifying and Enjoying Butterflies
By Marc and Maria Minno

"The first comprehensive guide to butterfly gardening in Florida and adjacent states . . . useful to anybody interested in butterfly gardening in Florida, but it is especially useful, even indispensable, for those who plan their garden to be an educational as well as aesthetic experience."—Mark Deyrup, entomologist, Archbold Biological Station

· presents 400+ color photos taken by the authors, showing every butterfly in adult, larva, and pupa stages
· presents practical information on garden plants, installation, and maintenance
· illustrations of both host and nectar plants
· includes inquiry-based science activities and a Florida butterfly checklist
 

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Florida Home Grown 2:
The Edible Landscape
by Tom MacCubbin (Author)

Tom MacCubbin is Florida's leading garden expert. In Florida Home Grown 2 he shows you how to: Design an edible landscape on paper, start transplants, keep diseases and insects at bay, harvest for maximum flavor and yield. Almost 50 detailed profiles of vegetables and fruits. A bountiful supply of charts, tables and illustrations. All you need to know to be a Florida gardener.

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Forager
A Subjective Guide To Miami's Edible Plants
by Tiffany Noé & George Echevarria

Created by three native plant enthusiasts, Forager provides a full-color window into South Florida’s foraging culture, featuring forty-two different plant species that can be found in publicly-accessible spaces around Miami. Descriptive plates detail the parts of each plant as well as primary growing season, popular locations, alternate names, and taste profiles. Histories of each plant buttress warnings about poisons and tips for picking, and full-color photos provide a glimpse into Miami foraging lifestyle. 
 

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Forest & Garden
Traces of Wildness in a Modernizing Land, 1897-1949
by Melanie Louise Simo

"In wildness is the preservation of the world," wrote Henry David Thoreau. But how the wild and the managed or artificially arranged environments coexist has been a matter of intense debate among foresters and landscape professionals at least since the era of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.

In Forest and Garden, Melanie L. Simo ranges through a period of landscape history that has been underexamined, between Olmsted and mid-twentieth-century modernism, when the contours of the debate were formed and the landscape professions came of age. Simo's book spans half a century, from the year that Charles Sprague Sargent's influential Garden and Forest magazine ceased publication in 1897 to the appearance in 1949 of two unusual books about land and landscape--Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac and Jens Jensen's The Clearing--that marked the beginning of a new ecological awareness.
 

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Full Planet, Empty Plates
The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
by Lester R. Brown
 

With food scarcity driven by falling water tables, eroding soils, and rising temperatures, control of arable land and water resources is moving to center stage in the global struggle for food security. “In this era of tightening world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a new form of geopolitical leverage. Food is the new oil,” Lester R. Brown writes.

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Grow Great Grub
by Gayla Trail

Your patio, balcony, rooftop, front stoop, windowsill, or planter box is a potential fresh food garden waiting to happen. In this book, Gayla Trail, the founder of the leading online gardening community You Grow Girl, shows you how to grow your own delicious, affordable, organic edibles virtually anywhere.

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Hummingbird Gardens
by Barbara Nielsen (Author), Nancy Newfield (Author), Roger Tory Peterson (Foreword)

From Booklist
An undeniable element of magic surrounds the unexpected discovery of a hummingbird paying a visit to one's own backyard. With that goal in mind, Newfield and Nielsen offer a compilation of material full of sensible advice for gardeners in all parts of the country who share the desire to attract hummingbirds to the home garden environment. Although the guide can be counted on to provide specific recommendations for the best varieties of flowers to plant in order to attract the lovely creatures, the appealing text integrates gardening ideas and designs with an informative introduction to the general habits (migrating and nesting patterns, etc.) of hummingbirds. A final section provides a detailed identification guide to various species and to plants (as designated by regional appropriateness). Alice Joyce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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In Defense of Food
An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan (Author)

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his hugely influential treatise The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan traced a direct line between the industrialization of our food supply and the degradation of the environment. His new book takes up where the previous work left off. Examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of health, this powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant manifesto cuts straight to the chase with a maxim that is deceptively simple: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. But as Pollan explains, food in a country that is driven by a thirty-two billion-dollar marketing machine is both a loaded term and, in its purest sense, a holy grail. The first section of his three-part essay refutes the authority of the diet bullies, pointing up the confluence of interests among manufacturers of processed foods, marketers and nutritional scientists—a cabal whose nutritional advice has given rise to a notably unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily. The second portion vivisects the Western diet, questioning, among other sacred cows, the idea that dietary fat leads to chronic illness. A writer of great subtlety, Pollan doesn't preach to the choir; in fact, rarely does he preach at all, preferring to lets the facts speak for themselves. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 

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Landscaping for Florida's Wildlife
Re-creating Native Ecosystems in Your Yard
by JOSEPH M. SCHAEFER (Author), GEORGE TANNER (Author)

As the natural landscape becomes more humanized, the habitat for many wildlife species has been lost or degraded. In a clear, step-by-step format, this book tells how to create a wildlife-friendly landscape that takes into account both people and nature. The authors' theme--"put back what you don't need"--allows the gardener to reduce maintenance costs while providing a habitat that offers wildlife the essentials of food, cover, water, and space.
*The book addresses such fundamental questions as which ecosystem is appropriate to a particular piece of property and how to determine which species use the property.
*It discusses how to consider soils, drainage patterns, utility lines, adjacent land uses, and existing native vegetation.
*It describes how to prepare a base map; add plant and non-plant elements such as birdhouses, burrows, and tree frog houses; and calculate the cost of materials.
*It tells how to install, maintain, and evaluate the new yard.

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Let it Rot
The Gardener's Guide to Composting
by Stu Campbell (Author)

From Library Journal
A readable, quietly humorous introduction to composting, this covers reasons to compost; differing approaches; how decomposition works; various methods, ingredients, and containers; how to speed decomposition; and how to use the end result. Campbell is an experienced gardener, and the book goes into great detail, but the text remains clear and interesting. The simple black-and-white illustrations vary between decorative sketches and straightforward diagrams; they could have been more frequent and more informative. The bibliography lists 14 other books on composting; a list of sources of composting supplies is also given. An interesting treatment of a basic subject for general readers, this is recommended for all gardening collections needing material on compost heaps. -Sharon Levin, Univ. of Vermont Medical Lib., Burlington
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc

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The Rodale Book of Composting
Easy Methods for Every Gardener
by Grace Gershuny (Editor), Deborah L. Martin (Editor)

From Library Journal
This is an update of Jerry Minnich and others' The Rodale Guide to Composting ( LJ 5/1/79), which itself updated J.L. Rodale's Complete Book of Composting (Rodale Pr., 1960. o.p.). The broad spectrum of information given will be useful from backyard urban gardening on up to industrial, municipal, and farm recycling. The first quarter of the book gives you all you ever wanted to know on the science of composting--and more--along with some history. A discussion of materials, methods, structures, equipment, and uses is followed by a brief look at large-scale composting. The writing is an uneven mix of scientific detail and the anecdotal. Chemical reactions are described in exquisite detail, and yet most quotes, while attributed, are neither dated nor their source given. Stu Campbell and Kathleen Bond Borie's Let It Rot: The Gardener's Guide to Composting ( LJ 1/91) is more readable and inviting for the individual gardener. While useful for its in-depth, detailed coverage, Rodale's almost-textbook is recommended only for comprehensive gardening collections.
- Sharon Levin, Univ. of Vermont Lib., Burlington
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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Second Nature
A Gardener's Education
by Michael Pollan (Author)

From Library Journal
Pollan, executive editor of Harper's and self-proclaimed amateur gardener, has written a book that is by turns charming and annoying, insightful and shallow, droll and banal. His collection of a dozen essays arranged by season is based on his experiences over a seven-year period in his Connecticut garden, along with vignettes from garden history. Unfortunately, Pollan's text is characterized by dubious and unsupported generalities, self-conscious humor, and extended, labored metaphors, and his lack of gardening authority dooms the book to superficiality. Experienced gardeners and devotees of garden literature will find little here that is original. Only for comprehensive gardening collections.
- Richard Shotwell, Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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Seedfolks
by Paul Fleischman

Sometimes, even in the middle of ugliness and neglect, a little bit of beauty will bloom. Award-winning writer Paul Fleischman dazzles us with this truth in Seedfolks--a slim novel that bursts with hope. Wasting not a single word, Fleischman unfolds a story of a blighted neighborhood transformed when a young girl plants a few lima beans in an abandoned lot. Slowly, one by one, neighbors are touched and stirred to action as they see tendrils poke through the dirt. Hispanics, Haitians, Koreans, young, and old begin to turn the littered lot into a garden for the whole community. A gift for hearts of all ages, this gentle, timeless story will delight anyone in need of a sprig of inspiration.







 

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Seeds To Seed
Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners
by Suzanne Ashworth

Seed to Seed is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds. Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale. The author has grown seed crops of every vegetable featured in the book, and has thoroughly researched and tested all of the techniques she recommends for the home garden. This newly updated and greatly expanded Second Edition includes additional information about how to start each vegetable from seed, which has turned the book into a complete growing guide. Local knowledge about seed starting techniques for each vegetable has been shared by expert gardeners from seven regions of the United States-Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast/Gulf Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Central West Coast, and Northwest.
 

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What the World Eats
By Faith D'Aluisio (author), Peter Menzel (Photographer)

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You Can Grow Tropical Fruit Trees
by Robert Mohlenbrock (Authors)

No citrus here, but lots of other fruits: mango, papaya, kumquat, avocado... In Florida there's a cornucopia of ornamental, edible delights! Botanist Robert Mohlenbrock shows you how to grow them in your own backyard. Contains illustrations and instructions on how to grow, prune and fertilize these living treasures.

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