The Brother Gardeners

Author: Andrea Wulf
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307454754
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
A fascinating look at the men who made Britain the center of the botanical world—from the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. “Wulf’s flair for storytelling is combined with scholarship, brio, and a charmingly airy style.... A delightful book—and you don’t need to be a gardener to enjoy it.” —The New York Times Book Review Bringing to life the science and adventure of eighteenth-century plant collecting, The Brother Gardeners is the story of how six men created the modern garden and changed the horticultural world in the process. It is a story of a garden revolution that began in America. In 1733, colonial farmer John Bartram shipped two boxes of precious American plants and seeds to Peter Collinson in London. Around these men formed the nucleus of a botany movement, which included famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus; Philip Miller, bestselling author of The Gardeners Dictionary; and Joseph Banks and David Solander, two botanist explorers, who scoured the globe for plant life aboard Captain Cook’s Endeavor. As they cultivated exotic blooms from around the world, they helped make Britain an epicenter of horticultural and botanical expertise. The Brother Gardeners paints a vivid portrait of an emerging world of knowledge and gardening as we know it today.

Founding Gardeners

Author: Andrea Wulf
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307390683
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, a fascinating look at the Founding Fathers like none you've seen before. “Illuminating and engrossing.... The reader relives the first decades of the Republic ... through the words of the statesmen themselves.” —The New York Times Book Review For the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation. Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.

The Night Gardener

Author: George Pelecanos
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0759567875
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa whose body has been found in a local community garden. The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop twenty years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan "Doc" Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T. C. Cook. The series of murders, all involving local teenage victims, was never solved. In the years since, Holiday has left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and now finds work as a bodyguard and driver. Cook has retired, but he has never stopped agonizing about the "Night Gardener" killings.The new case draws the three men together on a grim mission to finish the work that has haunted them for years. All the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them comes rushing back, and old ghosts walk once more as the men try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams. Bigger and even more unstoppable than his previous thrillers, George Pelecanos achieves in The Night Gardener what his brilliant career has been building toward: a novel that is a perfect union of suspense, character, and unstoppable fate.

The Gardener's Year

Author: Karel Capek
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486817245
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Book Description
A lighthearted mock-treatise reflects upon the pains and rewards of tending a small garden plot. "This very entertaining volume with its delightfully humorous pictures should be read by all gardeners." — Nature.

The Gardener's Botanical

Author: Ross Bayton
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691209138
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 1094

Book Description
The definitive guide to botanical Latin Unlock the secrets of botanical Latin with this beautifully illustrated encyclopedia. The Gardener's Botanical contains definitions of more than 5,000 plant names—from abbreviatus ("shortened") to zonatus ("with bands")—along with more than 350 color illustrations. Scientific plant names are an invaluable tool for those who understand them. Formed from Greek and, more commonly, from Latin root words, not only do they make it possible for gardeners and botanists to communicate, they also contain a wealth of hidden information. The Gardener's Botanical is the key to unlocking these secrets. This guide contains a breathtaking array of botanical names in alphabetical order. Each word is listed with a pronunciation guide, definition, example plant, and, where appropriate, etymology. Also included in this illuminating guide are special features on important plant genera, fact boxes, essays focusing on the history and importance of Latin names and botanical illustrations, and an index of common names with more than 2,000 popular plants, cross-referenced with their binomial name in Latin.

My Favorite Plant

Author: Jamaica Kincaid
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374281939
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
A delightful compendium of writing on plants. The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and by gardeners who write. Among the contributors are Christopher Lloyd, on poppies; Marina Warner, who remembers the Guinée rose; and Henri Cole, who offers poems on the bearded iris and on peonies. There is also an explanation of the sexiness of castor beans from Michael Pollan and an essay from Maxine Kumin on how, as Henry David Thoreau put it, one "[makes] the earth say beans instead of grass." Most of the essays are new in print, but Colette, Katharine S. White, D. H. Lawrence, and several other old favorites make appearances. Jamaica Kincaid, the much-admired writer and a passionate gardener herself, rounds up this diverse crew. A wonderful gift for green thumbs, My Favorite Plant is a happy collection of fresh takes on old friends. Other contributors include: Hilton Als Mary Keen Ken Druse Duane Michals Michael Fox David Raffeld Ian Frazier Graham Stuart Thomas Daniel Hinkley Wayne Winterrowd

Gardening Life

Author: Lee May
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 9781563524974
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Essays about May's own garden, other gardens he has visited, and people he has met through gardening.

The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt

Author: Andrea Wulf
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1524747378
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR From the New York Times bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, comes a breathtakingly illustrated and brilliantly evocative recounting of Alexander Von Humboldt's five year expedition in South America. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, but his most revolutionary idea was a radical vision of nature as a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone. His theories and ideas were profoundly influenced by a five-year exploration of South America. Now Andrea Wulf partners with artist Lillian Melcher to bring this daring expedition to life, complete with excerpts from Humboldt's own diaries, atlases, and publications. She gives us an intimate portrait of the man who predicted human-induced climate change, fashioned poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and influenced iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, and John Muir. This gorgeous account of the expedition not only shows how Humboldt honed his groundbreaking understanding of the natural world but also illuminates the man and his passions.

Two Little Gardeners

Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Publisher: Golden Books
ISBN: 9780375835292
Category : Children's stories, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Two little gardeners plant a garden in the spring, tend to it all summer, and pick the vegetables when they are ripe.

My Garden (Book)

Author: Jamaica Kincaid
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466828749
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
One of our finest writers on one of her greatest loves. Jamaica Kincaid's first garden in Vermont was a plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced friends, she planted only seeds of the flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book) she gathers all she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododendron Jane Grant, and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily. The sources of her inspiration -- seed catalogues, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, gardens like Monet's at Giverny -- are subjected to intense scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up. My Garden (Book) is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the persons who tend them.