Give the Gift of Nature Based Gardening

Author - Doug Tallamy (Hardcover)

Nature’s Best Hope shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. Because this approach relies on the initiatives of private individuals, it is immune from the whims of government policy. Even more important, it’s practical, effective, and easy—you will walk away with specific suggestions you can incorporate into your own yard. If you’re concerned about doing something good for the environment, Nature’s Best Hope is the blueprint you need. 

Author - Benjamin Vogt (Softcover)

Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter, and not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Author Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives ― lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens.

Author Doug Tallamy (Softcover)

 As development and habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. In Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife—native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals.  

But there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference. 

Xerces Society (Softcover) 

Welcome the world’s most exquisite visitors to your garden! Gardening for Butterflies, by the experts at the Xerces Society, introduces you to a variety of butterflies who need our help, and shows you how to design a habitat where they will thrive. This optimistic call to arms is packed with everything you need to create a beautiful, pollinator-friendly garden. You will learn why butterflies matter, why they are in danger, and what simple steps we can take to make a difference. You'll also learn how to choose the right plants and how to create a garden that flutters and flourishes with life. 

Mary Reynolds and Ruth Evans

 Individuals can’t save the world alone. But if millions of us work together to save our own patch of earth—then we really have a shot. How do we do it?  With Acts of Restorative Kindness (ARK). An ARK is a restored, native ecosystem. It’s a thriving patch of native plants and creatures that have been allowed and supported to re-establish in the earth's intelligent, successional process of natural restoration. Over time, this becomes a pantry and a habitat for our pollinators and wild creatures who are in desperate need of support.

These ARKs will become the seeding grounds for our planet’s new story. They will be sanctuaries for our shared kin—the rooted and unrooted—and safe havens for the magic and abundance of the natural world. Most importantly, the ARK-building actions are within our control and laid out here in We Are the ARK. In these inspiring pages, discover how one person’s actions can effect big change in this world. Even the tiniest postage stamp patch of land matters! Together we are building a patchwork quilt of life that will wrap its way around this planet. 

Author - Nancy Striniste (Softcover)

 Access to technology has created a generation of children who are more plugged in than ever before—often with negative consequences. But there is a solution. Unrestricted outdoor play helps reduce stress, improve health, and enhance creativity, learning, and attention span. In Nature Play at Home, Nancy Striniste gives you the tools you need to make outdoor adventures possible in your own backyard. With hundreds of inspiring ideas and illustrated, step-by-step projects, this hardworking book details how to create playspaces that use natural materials—like logs, boulders, sand, water, and plants of all kinds. Projects include hillside slides, seating circles, sand pits, and more. 

Author Sue Reed (Hard to find Paperback!)

Predictions about future effects of climate change range from mild to dire - but we're already seeing warmer winters, hotter summers, and more extreme storms. Proposed solutions often seem expensive and complex, and can leave us as individuals at a loss, wondering what, if anything, can be done.

Sue Reed and Ginny Stibolt offer a rallying cry in response - instead of wringing our hands, let's roll up our sleeves. Based on decades of experience, this book is packed with simple, practical steps anyone can take to beautify any landscape or garden, while helping protect the planet and the species that call it home. 

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Authors - Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke (Hardcover)

 Many gardeners today want a home landscape that nourishes and fosters wildlife, but they also want beauty, a space for the kids to play, privacy, and maybe even a vegetable patch. Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife. Richly illustrated and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work, The Living Landscape will enable you to create a garden that fulfills both human needs and the needs of wildlife communities. 

Author - Tony Dove (Hardcover)

Praised by Doug Tallamy as "an important new tool to our native plant libraries," this go-to guide is perfect for gardeners of all skill levels looking to add sustainable native flora to any horticultural project east of the Mississippi River Valley. Gleaned from the authors' 75 years of landscaping experience, this user-friendly reference offers suggestions on species selection based on a plant's performance, aesthetic appeal, and wide range of adaptability. Expert authors Tony Dove and Ginger Woolridge's valuable resource is organized for fast and confident tree and shrub selections for specific landscape applications, and is full of vivid four-color photographs, graphs, and practical tips. A sound and giftable volume for gardeners and landscapers from New England through the Carolinas, from the east coast to the Mississippi River, including Georgia and into northern Florida.

Doug Tallamy

 Douglas W. Tallamy awakened thousands of readers to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives. In this middle grade adaptation of the New York Times bestseller Nature's Best Hope, Tallamy outlines his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation that everyone can participate in regardless of age. 

In Nature's Best Hope (Young Readers' Edition), Tallamy empowers kids to use their own yards to help combat the negative effects of climate change. He does so by breaking down complex concepts into simple terms and real-world examples that kids can easily grasp. Black and white photographs help further clarify concepts. In addition to sharing the science, Tallamy encourages kids to take direct action. Some of these ideas include planting an oak tree (one of the most important tree species) at home. If that’s too large of a task, he suggests they can plant asters—a beautiful flower whose pollen bees use to feed their young. By helping the next generation see that they have power and agency over our collective future, this empowering book will drive home the positive point that kids are truly nature’s best hope. 

Kelly Norris

 Recreate the wild beauty and thriving ecology of meadows, prairies, woodlands, and streamsides in your own garden.

In New Naturalism, horticulturist and modern plantsman Kelly D. Norris shares his inspiring, ecologically sound vision for home gardens created with stylish yet naturalistic plantings that mimic the wild spaces we covet—far from the contrived, formal, high-maintenance plantings of the past. Through a basic introduction to plant biology and ecology, you’ll learn how to design and grow a lush, thriving home garden by harnessing the power of plant layers and palettes defined by nature, not humans.

The next generation of home landscapes don’t consist of plants in a row, pruned to perfection and reliant on pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides to survive. Instead, today’s stunning landscapes convey nature’s inherent beauty. These gardens are imbued with romance and emotion, yet they have so much more to offer than their gorgeous aesthetics. Naturalistic garden designs, such as those featured in this groundbreaking new book, contribute to positive environmental change by increasing biodiversity, providing a refuge for wildlife, and reconnecting humans to nature.

In the pages of New Naturalism you’ll find: 
 

• Planting recipes for building meadows, prairies, and other grassland-inspired open plantings even in compact, urban settings
• Nature-inspired ways to upgrade existing foundation plantings, shrub beds, and flower borders to a wilder aesthetic while still managing the space
• Inspiration for taking sidewalk and driveway plantings and turning them into visually soft, welcoming spaces for humans and wildlife alike
• Ideas for turning shady landscapes into canopied retreats that celebrate nature 
• Creative ways to make an ecologically vibrant garden in even the smallest of spaces

Kim Eierman (Founder of EcoBeneficial)

 The passion and urgency that inspired WWI and WWII Victory Gardens is needed today to meet another threat to our food supply and our environment—the steep decline of pollinators. In The Pollinator Victory Garden, environmental horticulturalist, landscape designer, and New York Botanical Garden and Brooklyn Botanic Garden teacher Kim Eierman offers accessible, actionable information and tips for winning the war against the demise of these essential animals.

Pollinators are critical to our food supply and responsible for the pollination of the vast majority of all flowering plants on our planet. Pollinators include not just bees, but many different types of animals, including insects and mammals. Beetles, bats, birds, butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps can be pollinators.

But, many pollinators are in trouble, and the reality is that most of our landscapes have little to offer them. Our residential and commercial landscapes are filled with vast green pollinator deserts, better known as lawns. These monotonous green expanses are ecological wastelands for bees and other pollinators.

With The Pollinator Victory Garden, learn how to transition your landscape into a pollinator haven by creating a habitat that includes pollinator nutrition, larval host plants for butterflies and moths, and areas for egg laying, nesting, sheltering, overwintering, resting, and warming.