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Green Housekeeping: Recipes and solutions for a cleaner, more sustainable home
by Christina StruttChristina Strutt of Cabbages & Roses reveals how to have a calmer, healthier, eco-friendly home.Saving the planet for future generations is a laudable aim, but what about the current populace? Why wait when even quite small lifestyle changes can make a big difference now? Green Housekeeping is full of advice and information to help you take a more sustainable path. Recycling, reusing and shopping at farmers’ markets are a good start, but cutting down on the use of poisonous chemicals is just as important – it’s perfectly possible to clean a house using nothing more than lemons, bicarbonate of soda, vinegar and plain water. Here old-fashioned methods are complemented by newer ideas and innovations, and applied not only to cleaning but also to caring for clothes, furniture, and even silver and glassware. Growing some of your own vegetables, fruit and herbs can be very satisfying, and you can use any extras to make jams, oils and chutneys using the handy tips and delicious recipes. Make beauty preparations and bath oils, too, for soothing, effective treatments to enhance everyday health and wellbeing. To become eco-friendly doesn’t require self-sacrifice – just some readjustment; and by following the advice in this invaluable guide you will find yourself living a calmer, greener life.
The Joy of Living with Less: How to downsize to 100 items and liberate your life
by Mary LambertFollow this unique programme to discover the joy of living with less items and discover how liberating and fulfilling life becomes when you learn to live with less.The premise of this book is simple: if you don’t love it, lose it! Many people think that the more they own, the more contented and happy they will be – their lives become defined by their possessions. In fact, the opposite is often true: the more we have, the less happy and contented we are in mind, body and spirit. Decluttering expert Mary Lambert explains how having too much clutter can stop you moving forward in life, and how learning to let go of items we neither love or need is liberating and fulfilling. The challenge starts with an inventory of your personal possessions, then you begin the process of clearing out your items, addressing each area at a time, from clothes, to jewellery, to hobby items. Once you've tackled your personal items, you can get started on the rest of your household goods.
Happy Starts at Home: Change your space, transform your life
by Rebecca WestUse your home as a tool to make better changes happen in your life. Through aligning your heart, home, and health, experience first-hand how small changes make a big difference.What does it take to be happy at home? It’s not about buying or not buying a new sofa. It’s about whether your home is working for you in the best way. Your home can directly improve your well-being and contentment with better health, sleep, and relationships, and ultimately decrease your stress levels to increase your all-round happiness. Design expert Rebecca West helps you to learn how to achieve a geographical cure without actually relocating and how to redecorate so you can feel best in your space. Along with beautiful photographs, there are a variety of self-assessment activities to connect your financial, emotional and physical health to your space to ensure it nurtures your vision – and while doing so, investing your time and money more effectively too. With the valuable advice in Happy Starts at Home, you can commit to a philosophy of buying fewer things and doing more to discover what’s holding you back, in order to find joy and create a home that makes you smile.
#shelfie: How to style and display your collections
by Geraldine JamesUse your shelves to display your collections and create ever-evolving works of art with Geraldine James’s inspirational ideas.Find out how you can use what you already have in a stylish and unexpected way to revitalise a room. Whether you want to group a collection of colourful vases against a dark wall, use picture rails to line up a selection of prints, or organise plants and treasured finds from the natural world, any shelf can be a stage for artful arrangements with this innovative guide. You can find a home for all your prized possessions, and the best thing about shelves is that you can change a display whenever the mood takes you. Chapter by chapter, discover ideas for how to arrange virtually anything and begin a journey into colour, textures and themes to create elegant focal points that give a home character and charm.
Wild Interiors: Beautiful plants in beautiful spaces
by Hilton Carter“We work with Hilton because he’s both a plant stylist and an incredible plant-care wizard. Hilton doesn’t just teach you how to get your plants to thrive – he teaches you how to bond with them.” - Apartment TherapyBestselling author Hilton Carter brings his unique eye and love of plants to show you how to create luscious interiors that not only look amazing but are good for your well-being, too. Hilton first guides you through his own plant journey, his inspirations, and his top ten favourite house plants. He then takes you on a Journey in Greenery where he showcases the homes of 12 inspiring plant parents that demonstrate the versatility of decorating with plants. From a tiny house in Venice, California and a light-filled loft in New York City, to a Berlin apartment decorated with vintage finds, and the Barcelona home of a ceramic artist, there are ideas for all types of spaces and budgets. Hilton then sets you off on your very own plant journey, taking you room by room, profiling the plants that are most suited to each: those that thrive in the tropical humidity of bathrooms, the erratic heat changes of kitchens and plants that can live happily in the indirect light of an entryway or bedroom. Packed full of interior design advice such as using ‘statement plants’ like Fiddle-leaf figs to create a focal point, how to layer your greenery by using hanging baskets, and how to assemble the perfect plant shelf, Hilton shows you how bringing houseplants into your home creates instant impact. Be inspired to create your own Wild Interiors with Hilton’s expert styling advice, plus his hints and tips on plant care that take the mystery out of looking after your green friends.
Why Cleaning Has Meaning: Bringing Wellbeing Into Your Home
by Linda ThomasFew of us enjoy cleaning: it often feels like a thankless, repetitive task which we force ourselves to do. Linda Thomas is an expert, professional cleaner who ran her own ecological cleaning company for over twenty years. In this unique book, she explores her passion for cleaning, and argues that cleaning can have a profound effect not just on the spaces we care for, but on our own wellbeing and personal development. This lively and readable book is full of anecdotes, practical examples and ecological cleaning tips from Linda's decades of cleaning experience. Ultimately she argues that if we raise our understanding of cleaning, we might even begin to enjoy it!
Companion Plants and How to Use Them: And How To Use Them
by Helen PhilbrickIt has long been observed, by farmers, gardeners and botanists alike, that from time to time certain plants seem to affect certain other plants growing their near them – both favourably and unfavourably. By taking account of these relationships, farmers and gardeners can improve the quality of food and flowers, reduce losses from pests and disease, drought and frost, and enhance both satisfaction and pleasure in their work and financial profit. Years of experimentation by Richard Gregg and subsequently Helen Philbrick and others resulted in this unique reference book. It offers a detailed and comprehensive A-Z of plants and how they affect each other and their surrounding environment, including the soil, insects and birds.
Weeds and What They Tell Us
by Ehrenfried E. PfeifferThis wonderful little book covers everything you need to know about the types of plants known as weeds. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer discusses the different varieties of weeds, how they grow and what they can tell us about soil health. The process of combatting weeds is discussed in principle as well as in practice, so that it can be applied to any situation. First written in the 1950s, this is still one of the best overviews of the subject available.
Biodynamic Preparations Around the World: Insightful Case Studies from Six Continents
by Ueli HurterBiodynamic agriculture first originated in central Europe but is now practised in farms, vineyards and gardens all over the world. At the heart of the biodynamic approach are the eight preparations – Horn manure, Horn silica, Yarrow, Chamomile, Nettle, Oak bark, Dandelion and Valerian – which are often produced by local biodynamic practitioners using well-established recipes. But as the biodynamic approach expands beyond its European origins, its methods have been increasingly adapted to meet the needs and challenges – climates, fauna, seasons and regulations – of different regions around the globe. This fascinating book presents the results of a unique study, carried out by the Agricultural Section at the Goetheanum, Switzerland, into how the biodynamic preparations are used in fifteen countries worldwide, including Egypt, Brazil, New Zealand, India and across Europe. The detailed case studies explore how the preparations are modified to suit their locations, as well as offering an insight into the work of each practitioner and how their understanding has evolved over the years.This book is a valuable reference into the production and application of the preparations around the world and an inspiring endorsement of how biodynamic principles hold true in such varied environments.
Vegetables and Herbs
by Liam McCannGrowing vegetables and herbs at home is easy and rewarding as long as you choose the best time to plant the right seeds. Some require a little TLC while others will happily look after themselves.You don’t need to tend a dedicated area in your garden as most vegetables herbs will thrive next to flowers or in containers on balconies or windowsills, or preferably in a plot or on an allotment.This informative little ebook looks at the origins and history of many of the world’s most popular vegetables herbs as well as teaching you the best way to grow them.
Grow Your Own Flowers for Kids
by Liam McCannGrowing flowers at home is easy and rewarding and as long as you follow the simple guidance in this handy ebook you should achieve some outstanding displays in the garden or else cut for display in the home.You don’t always need to tend a dedicated area in your garden as most plants are quite happy in borders or in containers on balconies or windowsills. Most species will also grow alongside vegetables in a plot. Follow the tips in this book to help pick the plants and flowers that will ensure success.Some require a little attention while others will happily last for weeks in a vase. Having flowers on the mantelpiece makes all the difference to a living room, and you shouldn’t need a florist to make the most of the plants in your garden.
The No-Dig Children's Gardening Book: Easy and Fun Family Gardening
by Charles DowdingDon't like endless digging and weeding? Don't let that stop you from getting into gardening! The simple and achievable gardening projects in this book are perfect for parents and young children to do together. All are based on Charles Dowding's trademark no-dig technique, which perfectly lends itself to gardening with little ones who can't manage heavy digging and who will quickly grow bored of endless weeding.Projects are broken down into easy, step-by-step processes, designed to be carried out by children. Attractive, full-bleed photography is supplemented with fun illustration and fully illustrated factual spreads. Running throughout the gardening projects are extra little facts about plants and wildlife, as well as things to look out for when you are outdoors.
Healing with Plants: The Chelsea Physic Garden Herbal
by Chelsea Physic GardenFrom the common stinging nettle to exotic adaptogens, the plant world is the most incredible medicine cabinet. With detailed profiles of more than 140 herbs, be inspired by this beautiful book to bring more plants into your life for health and happiness.A 'herbal' is essentially a book that contains a list of plants with notes on each plant's identification and uses. They were also often a family reference passed down through the generations like a recipe book, with remedies passed from mothers to daughters. Herbals would be used as reminders of when and how to harvest and prepare herbs, empowering families to look after their health. In Healing with Plants: The Chelsea Physic Garden Herbal, discover how to make your own simple herbal remedies, ideas for how to create a healing herb garden and how to forage for herbs in the wild. A history of healing and fascinating stories are told, including a guide to which ailments each herb can treat and how to use them, from healing trauma with St John's Wort to soothing a sore throat with an infusion of thyme and honey.The herbs included are those most well known for having some therapeutic benefit or that have made significant contributions to the history of medicine. Most are also easily accessible for preparing simple healing home remedies, mainly because they are common garden or hedgerow plants.
The Ayurveda Kitchen: Transform your kitchen into a sanctuary for health - with 80 perfectly balanced recipes
by Anne Heigham'Anne Heigham has brought the ancient, timeless wisdom of Ayurveda into these energizing recipes that nourish the doshas.Anne Heigham has brought the ancient, timeless wisdom of Ayurveda into these energizing recipes that nourish the doshas.' Vasant Lad, BAM&S, MASc, Ayurvedic Physician'Let food be your first medicine and the kitchen your first pharmacy.' Taittiriya UpanishadBy using the principles of Ayurveda, which is one of the fastest growing health practices, and a little vision, transform your kitchen into a space that nourishes your body, mind and soul.With this beautiful introduction to Ayurveda, learn how to use your kitchen as a natural pharmacy to improve your health and prevent imbalances with key Ayurvedic ingredients, 80 perfectly balanced vegetarian recipes and simple home remedies. Ayurveda aims to bring health back into balance, nourishing agni (metabolic fire) and prana (life force), while clearing ama (metabolic waste or 'sludge'). Just imagine fresh, vibrant herbs growing, seeds sprouting and pickles fermenting. Discover how to perform a kitchen sadhana at the beginning of each season, mix your own spice blends and balance recipes according to what you need and how you feel.Sections include:Introduction to AyurvedaAyurveda and seasonal eatingThe kitchen pharmacyRecipes from the Ayurveda kitchenRecipes include:Sweet potato and pea tortillaNourishing spiced pumpkin soupRefuelling rice and red lentil ballsCarrot and beetroot celebration cake
Where the Hearth Is: Stories of home (Kate Humble)
by Kate HumbleKate Humble has a knack for sharing her own journey towards a more pleasing and purposeful life in a way that inspires readers, enables them to reassess their own lives and helps them achieve their personal goals. Having encouraged readers to reconnect with nature in Thinking on My Feet and simplify their lifestyles in A Year of Living Simply, she turns now to reimagining whatever we consider 'home' - examining her own experiences and expectations, ideals and memories, and considering the views of others living uniquely, extraordinarily, happily. She's gaining insights from some unexpected quarters - including the animal kingdom.As our time spent in office buildings and other traditional workplaces shrinks forevermore, feeling happy, healthy, productive and content in our homes (be they castles or caravans, flat-shares or farms, fixed or temporary, inner city/out of town/beyond) is more important to get right than ever before. Where the Hearth Is will resonate with all those seeking to make the most of their lives during the many hours we all spend at home - whether it's a case of tiny adjustments while staying put, moving out, living differently or dreaming of building something new.
The Herb Almanac: A seasonal guide to medicinal plants
by Chelsea Physic GardenA beautiful and accessible seasonal guide to herbalism from the historic botanic garden.Discover the best times of the year for growing specific healing herbs and also when and how to forage for wild medicine, such as water mint, St John's Wort, hawthorn berries and rosehips. Recipes are included for how to use these herbs, along with folklore stories from herb wives and hedge witches, the meanings behind their names and the history of how these natural medicines were discovered.There are plenty of tips for how to create your own medicinal herb garden, even with just a few pots, along with a biodynamic guide for sowing, planting and harvesting. Including detailed hand-drawn line illustrations to help deepen your understanding, The Herb Almanac is the perfect gift for any nature lover.CONTENTS INCLUDES:IntroductionIncluding using herbs as seasonally appropriate remedies and tonics, an overview of herbs in folklore, wild medicine, magic, superstition, ritual, tradition and literature and herbs in religion and floriography (the language of flowers)Gathering and Using HerbsIncluding safe, legal and successful foraging, a brief introduction to growing your own herbs and preparing, drying and preserving herbsWitches' Brews: Poisonous Plants Including an overview of herbs with interesting stories that cannot be easily used, e.g. wormwood, hemlock and mandrakeHerb EncyclopediaIncluding detailed information on over 50 different herbs
Gardening in Slippers: New Poems for Garden Lovers
by Liz CowleyFollowing the success of her first four humorous poetry books, Liz Cowley now returns with a new and fresh collection on gardening, written in her inimitable, light-hearted style. Often clipping and pottering first thing in the morning, Liz turns her wicked wit on ants and weeds, early frost and slippery moss, and the many triumphs and trials of gardening. All the delights and minor tribulations are wittily captured, from bees helicoptering, lunch outside or inside, to irritation about a snapped handle. In observant, whimsical, poignant and highly readable lines, Liz's new collection of over a hundred poems in different styles is an enjoyable journey to the happiness of the amateur gardener.
Outside in My Dressing Gown: Poems for Garden Lovers
by Liz CowleyWhat is more enjoyable first thing in the morning than slipping out to the garden in your dressing gown? Liz Cowley shares this and many other delightful moments as she takes us on a humorous journey through the gardener's year. Laugh through the seasons with Liz's poems, filled with acute observations and bitter-sweet wit. Here is everything from the joy of a first crocus and the frustration of a floppy hyacinth to drought and soaring dragonflies, or wrestling with weevils and being kept awake by the nightmare sound of mating foxes. Written in many different styles from classic to modern, Liz's writing is a voice for all gardeners, even those who would not normally reach for verse.
Natural Selection: a year in the garden
by Dan Pearson"When it sings, a garden will have the power to transport and to lead you to a place that is magical. It is an oasis for creation, available to anyone with a little space and the compunction to get their hands dirty."In Natural Selection, Dan Pearson draws on ten years of his Observer columns to explore the rhythms and pleasures of a year in the garden. Travelling between his city-bound plot in Peckham and twenty acres of rolling hillside in Somerset, he celebrates the beautiful skeletons of the winter garden, the joyous passage into spring, the heady smell of summer's bud break and the flaring of colour in autumn. Pearson's irresistible enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge overflow in a book teeming with tips to inspire your own space, be it a city window box or country field. Bringing you a newfound appreciation of nature, both wild and tamed, reading Natural Selection is a deeply restorative experience.
Letters to a Beekeeper
by Alys Fowler Steve BenbowThis the story of how, over the course of a year, Alys, the Guardian gardening writer, learns how to keep bees; and Steve, the urban beekeeper, learns how to plant a pollinator-friendly garden.Part beautifully designed coffee-table book, part manifesto, this collection of engaging letters, emails, texts, recipes, notes and glorious photos creates a record of the trials, tribulations, rewards and joys of working with, rather than against, nature. And along the way, you will pick up a wealth of advice, tips and ideas for growing food and keeping pollinators well fed. Letters to a Beekeeper is for lazy gardeners, novice beekeepers and everyone in between. It is the best rule-breaking, wildlife-friendly, guerilla, urban gardening, insect-identifying, honey-tasting, wax-dripping, epistolary how-to book you could ever hope to own.
The House of Fiction: From Pemberley to Brideshead, Great British Houses in Literature and Life
by Phyllis RichardsonHouses in literature have captured readers’ imaginations for centuries, from Gothic castles to Georgian stately homes, Bloomsbury townhouses and high-rise penthouses. Step on to a tour of real and imagined houses that great English writers have used to reflect the themes of their novels… houses that became like characters themselves, embodiments of the social and historical currents of their time.Phyllis Richardson takes us on a journey through history to discover how authors’ personal experiences in their homes helped to shape the imaginative dwellings that have become icons of English literature:Virginia Woolf’s love of Talland House in Cornwall is palpable in To the Lighthouse, just as London’s Bloomsbury is ever-present in Mrs Dalloway. E.M. Forster’s childhood home at Rook’s Nest mirrors the idyllic charm of Howards End. Evelyn Waugh plotted Charles Ryder’s return to Brideshead while a guest at Madresfield. Jane Austen was no stranger to a manor house or a good ballroom. And Horace Walpole’s ‘little Gothic castle’ in Twickenham inspired him to write the first English Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto.But the English country house, from the idyllic to the unloved, is also viewed through a modern lens – Kazuo Ishiguro’s Darlington Hall, Ian McEwan’s Tallis House, Alan Hollinghurts’s Two Acres.Using historic sources, authors’ biographies, letters, news accounts, and the novels themselves, The House of Fiction presents some of the most influential houses in Britain through the stories they inspired, while offering candid glimpses of the writers who brought them to life.
The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2018
by Lia LeendertzThe Almanac revives the tradition of the rural almanac, connecting you with the months and seasons via moon-gazing, foraging, feast days, seasonal eating, meteor-spotting and gardening. Award-winning gardener and food writer Lia Leendertz shares the tools and inspiration you need to celebrate, mark and appreciate each moment of the year.
The Joy of Gardening (The\joy Of Ser.)
by Vanessa BerridgeThis pocket-sized miscellany, packed with quirky facts, quotes, handy hints and surprising stories is the perfect pick-me-up for anyone who knows the incomparable joy of gardening.
Life Hacks: Handy Tips to Make Life Easier (Life Hacks Ser.)
by Dan MarshallEver accidentally used your thumb as a hammer cushion while putting up a picture hook? Dozens of everyday dilemmas are solved with Life Hacks. This fully illustrated manual covers everything from nifty electric cable management to ingenious cooking methods and much, much more.
The Gardener's Year
by Pippa GreenwoodThis beautifully illustrated guide contains specific month-by-month ‘to do’ lists for ornamental gardens, edible crops and general maintenance, as well as tips on things to look out for, such as pests and how to eliminate them.