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Gardening Books on Kindle Unlimited: My Top Picks
Since I’ve primarily become a digital reader, I’ve really enjoyed getting to dig into gardening books, both old favorites and new discoveries, with my Kindle Unlimited subscription. Kindle Unlimited allows you to read a wide selection of books from participating authors and publishers for free, with your subscription price of $9.99 a month. While the…
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Kindle Gardening Books for $4 or Less
After reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, I’ve been even more enthused to simultaneously save money and space by reading digitally. Digital gardening books look fantastic on an iPad, or you can always read them on your computer screen, especially reference books which are…
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Designing a Meditative or Yoga Garden
Guest post from Jan Johnsen, author of the new book Heaven is a Garden and my co-contributor over at Garden Design magazine. Yoga and gardens are a natural fit! Both are very personal endeavors – Yoga practice elevates our sense of wellbeing and makes us more aware of the present moment while gardens encourage us…
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Shipping Now: The New Garden Design Magazine
Design geeks among you may know that Garden Design magazine folded early last year. I had regretful yet mixed feelings about this, because the magazine’s focus on designing a garden, rather than on the minutiae of actually growing a garden, was unique and I immediately felt the lack. However, I confess that the old Garden…
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Review of The 20-30 Something Garden Guide by Dee Nash
Gardening marketers are always getting their pants in a bunch over whether enough new people are picking up the torch and continuing gardening, and initiatives aimed at getting young people to garden abound. Of course, from my own experience I can say that gardening as a hobby evolves over time. As we age, we shouldn’t…
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Review of Kiss My Aster by Amanda Thomsen
Every so often, a book comes along which challenges the limits of the media and shows how much is still possible with old-fashioned paper and ink. Amanda Thomsen’s new book Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Fantastic Yard Totally Tailored to You, is just such a book.
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Succulents Simplified by Debra Lee Baldwin: Designer DIY With the Succulent Queen
If you’ve been around the world of horticulture for any time, you’re probably familiar with Debra Lee Baldwin’s work with succulents. Her first two books, Designing with Succulents and Succulent Container Gardens, are still the most thoughtful, in-depth guides to those topics available. However, both of those books have so much information that you could…
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The Latest Gardening Apps for iPhone and Android
Since I joined the modern world in getting a smart phone last year, I’ve been on the lookout for great gardening apps that can help me explain landscape design ideas to clients, get plant ideas on the go, or just give me a productive way of killing time when I’m stuck in line at the…
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Book Review of Lawn Gone: Attractive Alternatives to Lawn
While I love having a minimalist patch of organic lawn in my backyard for the cats and chickens to run around on, as a landscape designer I am thoroughly “over” using lawn as the default option. It takes more maintenance, fertilizer, and water than just about anything else in the landscape, yet it gives nothing…
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Best and Worst of 2012: Trends, Colors, Books, Tools, and the Most Popular Articles
2012 was a great year for gardening in many ways – the sustainability movement made for some beautiful, fresh ideas (like the insect habitat art introduced by Flora Grubb) and the continuation of the less-lawn movement gave designers an excuse to go bold with the front yard, skipping the usual lawn-with-foundation-plantings in favor of water…
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Why Grow That When You Can Grow This?: The Book
“Let’s face it: the garden is a popularity contest. High school is a metaphor for life, and gardening is no exception. Step into our gardens and we find the prom queen and the star quarterback, the cheerleader and the rebel who cut class. Popular plants rule today’s landscapes the same way popular kids rule the…