April is National Gardening Month!

For every gardener who cares about the planet, this guide to designing a bee garden helps you create a stunningly colorful, vibrant, healthy habitat that attracts both honeybees and native bees. In The Bee-Friendly Garden, award-winning garden designer Kate Frey and bee expert Gretchen LeBuhn provide everything you need to know to create a dazzling garden that helps both the threatened honeybee and our own native bees. No matter how small or large your space, and regardless of whether you live in the city, suburbs, or country, just a few simple changes to your garden can fight the effects of colony collapse disorder and the worldwide decline in bee population that threatens our global food chain. There are many personal benefits of having a bee garden as well! Bee gardens:

• · contain a gorgeous variety of flowers
• · bloom continuously throughout the seasons
• · are organic, pesticide-free, and ecologically sustainable
• · develop healthy and fertile soil
• · attract birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects
• · increase the quantity of your fruit and vegetable harvest
• · improve the quality, flavor, and size of your produce

Illustrated with spectacular full-color photos, The Bee-Friendly Garden debunks myths about bees, explains seasonal flower progression, and provides detailed instructions for nest boxes and water features. From “super blooming” flowers to regional plant lists and plants to avoid, The Bee-Friendly Garden is an essential tool for every gardener who cares about the planet and wants to make their yard a welcoming habitat for nature’s most productive pollinator. (from Amazon.com)

“Jessica Walliser lets readers in on the secrets to a garden that buzzes with activity. Her profiles, on the insects that fight pests and the best plants for attracting them, offer clear, practical tips.” —Martha Stewart Living. A healthy population of beneficial insects can eliminate the need for dangerous pesticides. Say goodbye to common pests like spider mites, aphids, and leafhoppers just by planting a beautiful garden full of the right flowers and herbs! At first it might seem counter intuitive to want bugs in your landscape, but insects are good for your garden—especially the helpful ones that eat the pests feeding on your favorite plants.  Say goodbye to common pests like spider mites, aphids, and leafhoppers just by planting a beautiful garden full of the right flowers and herbs! In Attracting Beneficial Bugs, organic gardening expert Jessica Walliser provides an accessible guide to selecting, placing, and caring for plants that will invite beneficial insects into your garden to do the dirty work of pest control for you. You’ll learn which plants lure in pest-eating predators and how to design a beautiful garden that provides for these beneficial bugs throughout the year. (from Amazon.com)

Nothing tastes better than herbs harvested fresh from the garden! Grow Your Own Herbs shares everything you need to know to grow the forty most important culinary herbs. You’ll learn basic gardening information, including details on soil, watering, and potting. Profiles of 40 herbs—including popular varieties like basil, bay laurel, lemon verbena, tarragon, savory, thyme, and more—feature tasting notes, cultivation information, and harvesting tips. Additional information includes instructions for preserving and storing, along with techniques for making delicious pastes, syrups, vinegar, and butters. If you are new to gardening, have a limited space, or are looking to add fresh herbs to their daily meals, Grow Your Own Herbs by Susan Belsinger is a must-have. (from Amazon.com)

Companion planting has a long history of use by gardeners, but the explanation of why it works has been filled with folklore and conjecture. Plant Partners by Jessica Walliser delivers a research-based rationale for this ever-popular growing technique, offering dozens of ways you can use scientifically tested plant partnerships to benefit your whole garden. Through an enhanced understanding of how plants interact with and influence each other, this guide suggests specific plant combinations that improve soil health and weed control, decrease pest damage, and increase biodiversity, resulting in real and measurable impacts in the garden. Intentionally growing certain plants together to benefit the whole garden now has science to explain its success. Jessica Walliser’s new vision of an old tradition is built around a modern understanding of the marvelous web of connections happening in the garden and how to use them to create real and measurable results. Discover dozens of well-studied partnerships that offer fresh strategies to:

• - Break up heavy soils
• - Combat weeds and disease
• - Lure pests away
• - Attract specific beneficial insects
• - Improve pollination

Raised bed gardening is the fastest-growing garden strategy today, and Raised Bed Revolution by Tara Nolan is the definitive guidebook to mastering this consistently proven and effective gardening method. Raised Bed Revolution provides you with information on size requirements for constructing raised beds, height suggestions, types of materials you can use, and creative tips for fitting the maximum garden capacity into small spaces—including vertical gardening. Enhanced with gorgeous photography, this book covers subjects such as growing-medium options, rooftop gardening, cost-effective gardening solutions, planting tips, watering strategies (automatic water drip systems and hand watering), and more. The process of creating and building raised beds is a cinch, too, thanks to the extensive gallery of design ideas and step-by-step projects. This gardening strategy is taking serious root. Why? Several reasons:

• Raised beds allow gardeners to practice space efficiency as well as accessibility (the beds can be customized to be any height).
• Raised beds permit gardeners to use their own soil, and they can be designed with wheels for easy portability if partial sunlight is a problem.
• Water conservation is easier for gardeners who use raised beds.
• Pest control is assisted because most garden pests can’t make the leap up into the raised bed. For yards that struggle with drainage, raised bed gardening offers a no-brainer solution. Raised beds simply create a more interesting yard!

Find out more about why everyone is joining the raised bed revolution, roll up your sleeves and join in! (from Amazon.com)