Enter a world of tents, tea, & terrifically good jam with RHS Great British Village Show. Written by Thane Prince & Matthew Biggs, & with a foreword by Alan Titchmarsh, this is the only guide to a unique British tradition. Every year, hundreds of country shows & fairs take place across the UK. Celebrate this tradition & step behind the scenes of the British country show with insider facts & beautiful photographs that show you every aspect of preparing, presenting, & prize-winning on the big day. Discover how judges reach their nail-biting decisions by using official RHS guidelines for over 100 fruit, vegetable, & flower categories, & learn how to prepare show-quality preserves & bakes with tips from the experts. RHS Great British Village Show tells you exactly what the judges are looking for
- & what to avoid. Packed with staging tips, expert guides, photo diaries, & prize-winning recipes, RHS Great British Village Show is a unique insider`s look behind the scenes of a wonderful British tradition.
...

Ever wondered how worms breathe? Or why exactly trees are so big? This book covers all aspects of gardens & gardening, & will satisfy all your horticultural curiosity. Packed with photographs, vintage engravings & diagrams, this book will answer everything from the practical to the quirky & whimsical. Feature boxes provide practical guidance, so that you can apply your new-found knowledge to your own garden. Written by the head of the RHS Members` Advisory Service, this book is the ideal gift for fact-loving gardeners with curious minds. ...

RHS Latin for Gardeners is an informative, entertaining & beautifully illustrated unraveling of the mysteries of botanical Latin. Over 3, 000 Latin names are listed alphabetically, showing how plant names can reveal where a plant originally comes from (and thus its preferred growing conditions), along with such properties as its shape, form, colour, taste, & smell. Each name is clearly defined & accompanied by a pronunciation guide, & the pages are filled with attractive botanical illustrations. Fascinating feature spreads retell the adventures of important plant hunters such as Sir Joseph Banks & Alexander von Humboldt, & explain how their discoveries affect the way our gardens look today. Individual plants are also profiled throughout, showing how their names can illuminate their hidden histories. Aided by this book, every gardener, & their garden, will benefit from uncovering the wealth of information that lies within the remarkable world of Latin binomials. A little Latin can do a lot of good
- apply the lore of Latin to your own garden!
...

Illustrated with step-by-step artworks, this guide dispels myths about organic gardening & explains all aspects of organic garden management, including the planning of an organically-balanced environment, soil preparation, pests & diseases, weed control, crop care & cultivation, & also contains a year-round checklist for instant season-by-season planning. ...

RHS Practical Latin for Gardeners is a unique guide to plant binomials based on the bestselling RHS Latin for Gardeners. It contains 1, 500 of the most useful & most widespread Latin names, organized into thematic chapters including Colour, Size, Form & Habitat. Each chapter is further subdivided into smaller groups, such as large plants & small plants. This allows gardeners to make new connections & discoveries in a way standard alphabetical lists don`t permit. ` Behind the Name` feature boxes further increase the book`s practical value, & a wide range of botanical watercolours ensure that it is beautiful as well as functional. This book

Includes:: a definition & pronunciation guide for each word, as well as a 16-page alphabetical index, so that it can still be used as a conventional dictionary of Latin names. & its handy, pocket-sized format makes it the perfect gift.

...

RHS Tales from the Tool Shed is an historical, horticultural journey told through fifty pieces of garden gear. A treasure trove of garden paraphernalia, it explores the roots & evolution of objects, names & places, covering everything from the humble spade to architectural ornaments. Practical insights into the usage & maintenance of each tool appear throughout, along with dozens of attractive photographs, etchings & botanical illustrations. Written by the author of the bestselling Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History, this is a book to cherish for all gardeners & garden lovers. ...

An anthology of the best garden writing from the pages of The Garden, the magazine of the Royal Horticultural Society. As well as revealing key moment from a time of intense change, this anthology paints a rich & intriguing picture of what gardening means today. The writers tell of plant-hunting & new gardening practices, fashion & growing food, whilst shedding light on the inner landscape of the thoughtful gardener. Collected & curated by Ursula Buchan, herself an anthologist, The Garden Anthology presents a narrative of thoughts & opinions for keen gardeners to help navigate the gardening year, & comprises the best writing from more than the last 100 years. This 320-page reading book

Includes:: short essays, opinions, thoughts & excerpts from 80 garden writers & designers including James Wong, Sir Roy Strong, Helen Dillon, Anna Pavord, E A Bowles, Gertrude Jekyll, John Brookes, Tim Richardson, Joy Larkcom, Hugh Johnson, Nigel Slater, Lia Leendertz, Ursula Buchan, Nigel Colborne & Mary Keen under the universally-appealing subjects of: the kitchen garden; wildlife & wildflowers; gardens; garden design; the environment; plants; people; seasons & the weather.

...

Garden designer, lecturer & broadcaster Matt explores how to design an urban outdoor space, no matter the size or location
-
...

In ” Rhumb Lines & Map Wars, ” Mark Monmonier offers an insightful, richly illustrated account of the controversies surrounding Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator`s legacy. He takes us back to 1569, when Mercator announced a clever method of portraying the earth on a flat surface, creating the first projection to take into account the earth`s roundness. As Monmonier shows, mariners benefited most from Mercator`s projection, which allowed for easy navigation of the high seas with rhumb lines--clear-cut routes with a constant compass bearing--for true direction. But the projection`s popularity among nineteenth-century sailors led to its overuse--often in inappropriate, non-navigational ways--for wall maps, world atlases, & geopolitical propaganda. Because it distorts the proportionate size of countries, the Mercator map was criticized for inflating Europe & North America in a promotion of colonialism. In 1974, German historian Arno Peters proffered his own map, on which countries were ostensibly drawn in true proportion to one another. In the ensuing ”map wars” of the 1970s & 1980s, these dueling projections vied for public support--with varying degrees of success. Widely acclaimed for his accessible, intelligent books on maps & mapping, Monmonier here examines the uses & limitations of one of cartography`s most significant innovations. With informed skepticism, he offers insightful interpretations of why well-intentioned clerics & development advocates rallied around the Peters projection, which flagrantly distorted the shape of Third World nations; why journalists covering the controversy ignored alternative world maps & other key issues; & how a few postmodern writers defended the Peters worldview with a self-serving overstatement of the power of maps. ” Rhumb Lines & Map Wars” is vintage Monmonier: historically rich, beautifully written, & fully engaged with the issues of our time. ...

I am not a historian. In fact, I wrote this poem in order to teach myself some history. I thought that sorting facts into verse form would concentrate my mind wonderfully. Which it did. Brought up with the iambic pentameters of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses ringing in his ears, James Muirden's rhyming history is a long poem in an equally simple & jolly form. Irreverent, humorous & illustrated by David Eccles. ...