This delightful book is an especially helpful tool for the beginning gardener. It will guide you and your children through all the basics of creating your very own garden. What a wonderful project for a toddler! Based on a gardening project started at the French-American School in Berkeley, California, this book will take you from planning and planting to harvesting and cooking delicious herbs and vegetables. The recipes are almost entirely vegetarian; including Herb Mayonnaise, Corn, Rice and Tomato Salad with Basil, and Snap Bean and Potato Soup with Pasta, just to name a few. Also includes a resource section for seed suppliers and more.

This book of poetry by RLS is childhood at it's most innocent. It's sad to find out it is out of print. The Swing, is a wonderful and sweet reflection of a simple and sometimes long forgotten act. "How do I like to go up in a swing..." brings back the smiles, warmth and freedom of childhood. It is a must for any parent at bedtime. For new parents and grandparents it is a must.

If you are contemplating the construction of a Chinese garden, or are just interested in their history or development, this is an excellent, concise introduction to the topic. It presents the history, philosophy, and guidlines for construction in a clear way. It condenses a large number of references down to a readable form. The bibliography of related works in Chinese and English is worth the price of the book.

A superb study that is as engrossing as it is elegantly written and lavishly illustrated, and a sensitive inquiry into the aesthetics, the history and the philosophy that underpin an ancient and majestic civilization's view of mankinds's place within the cosmos. Both unique and profound. An essential work.

Rarely do we have a Westerner who can explain the intricacies and beauty of the Chinese Garden, which certainly played an important role in the lives of the Emperors and Empresses, and the Chinese literati. Maggie Keswick, by virtue of her education in Shanghai and her travels in China, has written a unique and lovely book to explain the philosophy behind the Chinese Garden. She has both depth and width in a subject that is scholarly, yet explained so well that the ordinary reader can appreciate. Ancient Chinese gardens gave inspiration to bonsai and miniature landscape art as well as the Zen gardens of Japan. Keswick's use of pictures and stories make the book indeed fulfilling.

This is a wonderful story about a little girl who works with her neighbors to turn a vacant lot into a garden. Over the course of the story the grumpy old man changes because of the garden. It's a great story, high readability for middle to end third grade students on grade level.

If you're interested in the history of public parks, 19th century landscape design, the social history of public spaces, or Australian cities, this should be in your collection.

The public gardens that (nearly) surround Melbourne's CBD form a collection of landscapes that would be unimaginable in most cities. Like Adelaide, some cities have more extensive greenbelts but few have such large areas that can, fairly, be described as 'gardens'. In fewer still were these developed from the start as public places.

CIVILISING THE CITY traces the history of these gardens in two main sections. The first describes collective influences - designers and other individuals as well as local political, cultural and social trends. The second, based around a fabulous collection of historical photos, provides a history of each garden starting in the first decade after the Victorian gold rush (1851), continuing through Melbourne's boom years of the 1880s and the era of Federation (1901) when it was the capital of Australia, and the inter-wars period.

Pleasant and popular though these gardens are, and although they feature a few inspired spaces, you wouldn't look to any of them as masterpieces of landscape architecture. However, when you consider them as contemporaries of Olmsted's Central Park in NYC - a sort of alternative parallel universe of landscapes - it makes a fascinating study in how subtleties of culture, climate and individuals are reflected in design.

Whitehead has produced a readable and engaging narrative that is also an authoritative and informative history based on primary sources. Although it featured on the best seller list for several weeks in The Age (Melbourne), the book is out of print.

If you're interested in other aspects of Australian garden or landscape history, Whitehead also edited PLANTING THE NATION, a similarly readable collection of essays on landscapes around the period of Australian Federation published by the Australian Garden History Society (2001). The recent encyclopedic OXFORD COMPANION TO AUSTRALIAN GARDENS is also worth a look.

The Cloud Garden is a must read for anyone who likes orchids, adventure, or travel! The authors Tom Hart Dyke and Paul Winder made you actually feel like you were in the jungle with them going through despair as well as outright comedy with the FARC guerrilas. Essentially the book is about botanist/traveller Tom Hart Dyke and adventure traveller Paul Winder (both strangers to each other) and how they meet up and decide to cross the Darien Gap on the border of Panama and Columbia. Six days into their journey they are kidnapped by FARC guerrilas and held hostage for nine months. The authors provide a very descriptive detail of their environment, kidnappers, and impossible situations that had to be overcomed. Highly recommended!

Wayne Greenhaw is one of the great Southern writers. One might not think that a book of essays and stories set in Alabama and Mexico would have a strong sense of unity. Greenhaw, though, uses the settings to tell wonderful, mostly autobiographical tales that are as rich in detail as they are moving. There is a reason that Pat Conroy, Harper Lee, Winston Groom, and Fannie Flagg all rave about this book (their quotes adorn the back cover). If you love the strong, unique voice of the South, you will enjoy Greenhaw's wonderful book.

The first thing a book about color in the garden ought to have is big pictures and lots of 'em. This book is positively unstinting: full page and even double page wonders (muzzle yourself; although the paper quality seems good, it would be a pity to sully the pages with drooling).

The seldom-under-opinionated Christopher Lloyd provides text as colorful as the photos, so brace for throwaway remarks about mundane dahlia leaves and not being snobby about dandelion flowers. There is a reassuring coziness, too, as Lloyd reviews his delights and prejudices about gardening in general and on his own expansive plot.

Here's a Christopher Lloyd lecture and slide show to peruse at your leisure. Just like such events, the book is thoroughly informative and completely entertaining.