An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature's crucial role in our emotional and mental health

Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps. When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The CryptoNaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature.

Something in the Woods Loves You tells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person's life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of a single mushroom, Anderson has written a lyrical love letter to the natural world and given us the tools to see it all anew.

The Midwest offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Lisa Rose as your trusted guide, you'll learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Midwest Foraging include:

*Clear, color photographs
*Identification tips
*Guidance on how to ethically harvest
*Suggestions for eating and preserving

A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

In How Can I Help?, Tallamy tackles the questions commonly asked at his popular lectures and shares compelling and actionable answers that will help gardeners and homeowners take the next step in their ecological journey. Topics range from ecology, evolution, biodiversity and conservation to restoration, native plants, invasive species, pest control, and supporting wildlife at home. Tallamy keenly understands that most people want to take part in conservation efforts but often feel powerless to do so as individuals. But one person can make a difference, and How Can I Help? details how.

Whether by reducing your lawn, planting a handful of native species, or allowing leaves to sit untouched, you will be inspired and empowered to join millions of other like-minded people to become the future of backyard conservation.

A genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto for rewilding the city, the self, and society.

Brown lives far from any conventional battlefield, but he is surrounded by the wreckage of a different war, and he, too, finds hope in cultivating the ruins of nature...A Natural History of Empty Lots is less a departure from the nature writing tradition than a welcome addition to its edgelands. --New York Review of Books

A Natural History of Empty Lots is a genre-defying work of nature writing, literary nonfiction, and memoir that explores what happens when nature and the city intersect.

During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property--abandoned and full of litter and debris--was an unlikely site for a home. Brown had become fascinated with these empty lots around Austin, so-called ruined spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment. He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. There, in our most damaged landscapes, he witnessed the remarkable resilience of wild nature, and how we can heal ourselves by healing the Earth.

Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting, A Natural History of Empty Lots offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands.

Growing Bulbs in the Natural Garden is a four-season guide to combining bulbs with perennials and grasses in a loose, nonchalant style, from a leading figure in the New Perennial movement. From the earliest snowdrops to alpine violets, tulips, alliums, late autumn crocuses, and many more, bulbs add interest and color to the garden throughout the year. Renowned naturalistic garden designer, Jacqueline van der Kloet, has mastered a casual, magical technique where bulbs emerge playfully among other plants, as if dancing freely among the perennials and grasses. Both friendly and accessible, the book introduces bulbs as essential to any garden at any scale, inviting in pollinators, providing wonderful pops of color and personality, and extending a garden's bloom time in the shoulder seasons.

Readers will find information on:

• Bulbs basics for beginners, including easy varieties that anyone can grow well
• Color combinations that will transform the character of any garden
• How to plan, plant, and care for bulbs in every season, including handy tools to make work easier
• Tips on naturalizing bulbs so they come back on their own, year after year
• How planting bulbs directly into grass transforms a lawn (and invites the bees in early spring!)
• Techniques for layering bulbs in smaller spaces such as containers, balconies, green roofs, and wall-side borders
• Tips for growing bulbs on the larger scale
• Perennial partner plants for a standout, integrated garden in constant bloom

Compiled by two distinguished professors of horticulture, The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation is a must for professionals and students of horticulture. Over 1,100 species and their propagation requirements by seeds, cuttings, grafting and budding, and tissue culture are discussed in exhaustive detail. Essentially a recipe book for making more trees and shrubs, this reference is a high-level how-to.

In his groundbreaking book Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife--native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals. As development and habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations.

Luckily, there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference.

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunström, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual artist, Tuulikki Tooti Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The island's flora, fauna, and weather patterns provided deep inspiration which can be seen reflected in all of Jansson's work, most famously in her bestselling novel The Summer Book and her longstanding comic strip and novels for children, Moomin. Tove's signature spare, quirky prose, and Tooti's subtle ink washes and aquatints combine to form a work of meditative beauty, a chronicle of living peacefully in nature and observing the island's ecology and character. Notes from an Island is both a work of artistic collaboration and an homage to the deep love the two women shared. One feels as if Jansson's journal, with Tooti's sketches tucked inside, has been unearthed like a treasure from under a pile of old quilts in the back of their rustic cabin.

Praise for the essay, The Island

At once a short story, an essay, and a prose poem, 'The Island' reads both like a sketch for The Summer Book and a vignette of Klovharun ... the text seems to change following mysterious tides from a timeless present to an urgent past. --Hernan Diaz, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Praise for Tove Jansson

It could be said that everything she wrote is, in one way or another, about the creative interactions between art and reality or art and nature.--The Guardian

Her style is not at all 'poetic'--quite the contrary. It is prose of the very highest order; it is pure prose. Through its quiet clarity we see unreachable depths, threatening darkness, promised treasures.--Ursula K. LeGuin, The Guardian

Tove Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.--Philip Pullman

It's hard to describe the astonishing achievement of Jansson's artistry.--Ali Smith

Though many plants go dormant in wintry months, there are many inspiring cultivars and varieties that hold their interest through the cold and snow, including brightly colored twigs, buds, and berries, dazzling winter flowers and dried seed pods. Plants for the Winter Garden extends the possibilities for the cold-climate gardener and provides invaluable insight that will make any garden thrive during the cold season.Plantsman Warren Leach shares expertise and techniques perfected over thirty years of gardening in frigid eastern Massachusetts. Discover how to incorporate structural elements like stone walls, paths, and hardy containers that keep gardens intriguing when covered with snow; accentuate plant shapes that hold their form year-round; site and prune evergreens for maximum effect; and showcase trees with textured or colorful bark that stand out in gray months. And much more!

A beautiful catalogue of 80 plants, revered by indigenous people for their nourishing, healing, and symbolic properties. --Gardens Illustrated

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath--known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwígara--has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón builds on this concept of connection and highlights plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples.

Salmón teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths. Discover in these pages how the timeless wisdom of iwígara can enhance your own kinship with the natural world.

A thought-provoking scientific narrative investigating ice patch archaeology and the role of glaciers in the development of human culture.

Glaciers figure prominently in both ancient and contemporary narratives around the world. They inspire art and literature. They spark both fear and awe. And they give and take life. In The Age of Melt, environmental journalist Lisa Baril explores the deep-rooted cultural connection between humans and ice through time.

Thousands of organic artifacts are emerging from patches of melting ice in mountain ranges around the world. Archaeologists are in a race against time to find them before they disappear forever. In entertaining and enlightening prose, Baril travels from the Alps to the Andes, investigating what these artifacts teach us about climate and culture. But this is not a chronicle of loss. The Age of Melt explores what these artifacts reveal about culture, wilderness, and what we gain when we rethink our relationship to the world and its most precious and ephemeral substance--ice.

Spot an owl that's long been watching your every move and darker aspects of its reputation may spring to mind: harbinger of doom, guides through the spirit world, merciless bird of prey. Mythology and superstitions have projected our fear of the unknown onto these mostly night-dwelling creatures. But these wondrous birds are so much more than shadows or silent glides through the night. In The Owl Handbook, lifelong birding enthusiast John Shewey leads us through an exploration of owls' cultural impact as seen in folklore and mythology, provides in-depth investigations of 19 owls of North America and a survey of 200 owls across the globe, and gives advice on how to respectfully observe and protect these enigmatic birds, brought to life by hundreds of full-color photographs.

Drawing on a lifetime of organic gardening, Barbara Damrosch collects her lessons learned and wisdom gained into an easy-to-read-and-enjoy overview of kitchen gardening. For the new gar­dener, there is encouragement on top of nuts-and-bolts advice. For every gardener, there is inspiration to face the challenges inherent in a life deeply rooted in and fed from the garden. --American Gardener

In A Life in the Garden, horticultural icon Barbara Damrosch imparts a lifetime of wisdom on growing food for herself and her family. In writing that's accessible, engaging, and elegant, she welcomes us to garden alongside her. Personal, thoughtful, and often humorous, this book offers practical DIY insights that will delight gardeners, cooks, and small-scale farmers. With a personal and sometimes irreverent tone, Barbara expresses the pleasure she takes in gardening, the sense of empowerment she finds in it, and the importance of a partnership with the real expert: nature.

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture

As heard on Science Friday.

Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they have had on our culture and civilization. Their anatomy and habits inform how we live, work, create art, and innovate. Featuring nearly 250 color images--from ancient etchings to avant-garde art, from bug-based meals to haute couture--The Insect Epiphany proves that our world would look very different without insects, not just because they are crucial to our ecosystems, but because they have shaped and inspired so many aspects of what makes us human.

Pansies is the big idea flower book we've all been waiting for. While working at the famed Floret Flower Farm, Brenna Estrada was so inspired by the pansies being grown that she began to trial hundreds of varieties of pansies and violas on her own farm. Her innovative approach to growing in full sun results in pansies with long stems, breathtaking fragrance, and unique color.

Filled with stunning photography, Pansies is perfect for growers, florists, artists, and collectors. Readers will discover:
-The fascinating history of pansies and violas, from their origination as a wildflower to a necessary adornment in every household garden
-Everything you need to know about growing pansies (and how to save pansy seeds!)
-How to keep pansies healthy and resilient all year round
-Inspiration for incorporating pansies in crafts, recipes, and in the apothecary
-Inspiring examples of knockout bouquets and arrangements
-Lush profiles on 50 varieties of pansies and violas available today

In Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants, Scott Kloos is your trusted guide to finding, identifying, harvesting, and using over one hundred of the region's most powerful wild plants. You'll learn how to safely and ethically forage, and how to use wild plants in herbal medicines including teas, tinctures, and salves. Plant profiles include:

*Clear, color photographs,
*Identification tips
*Medicinal uses and herbal preparations
*Harvesting suggestions

Lists of what to forage for each season makes the guide useful year-round. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers, naturalists, and herbalists in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and northern California.

Having a maximalist garden is a bold aesthetic choice--yet it also brings vitality back to the earth, in an abundant expression of more. Garden to the Max celebrates gardens across the US that embrace maximalism through joy and wonder, nonstop blooms, and abundant layers. The book is a feast of gorgeous photography by Bob Stefko, showcasing individual quirkiness, wild collections, and bold, personality-packed plant combinations that amplify the grandeur of each garden's unique vision, packing in plants for their exuberant style and ecological benefits.

Featured gardeners include an amateur ornithologist seeking to attract more birds, an event planner's tropical paradise, a pair of city dwellers reducing their carbon footprint, an urban garden pioneer promoting pollinator gardens, and a life-long biophilic propagating endangered plants to nurture insects. Longtime garden writer Teresa Woodard shares stories of each garden and its fearless designers, the inspirations for their plant collections, and their hopes for our earth's future.

Information-packed sidebars full of standout plants and growing tips will inspire dreamers and gardeners to embrace their own passions. Garden to the Max gives everyone permission to bring the exuberant interior style into the garden and develop a spirited reverence for plants, celebrating joy and personality in the garden--to the max!

The Curious Kitchen Gardener is for cooks and gardeners interested in bringing novelty and variety into their lives and homes. It follows each season of planting and harvesting--featuring nearly 35 often overlooked edibles, with illustrations, and a delicious recipe for each, encouraging us to see our gardens as an integrated whole and a year-round practice. Calling upon decades of Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver experience, Linda Ziedrich includes fascinating cultural context and personal connections to each plant. The result is the story of how and why an adventurous gardener cultivated a unique cuisine for herself and her family--and how you can too.

The Nature of Oaks reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. From woodpeckers who collect and store hundreds of acorns for sustenance to the beauty of jewel caterpillars, Doug Tallamy illuminates and celebrates the wonders that occur right in our own backyards. He also shares practical advice about how to plant and care for an oak, along with information about the best oak species for your area.

The Nature of Oaks will inspire you to treasure these trees and to act to nurture and protect them.

With our hearts and minds focused on the stewardship of the only planet we have, the best way to engage in a hopeful future is to plant oaks! Let this book be your inspiration and guide. --The American Gardener

In Nature's Best Hope (Young Readers' Edition), Tallamy empowers kids to use their own yards to help combat the negative effects of climate change. He does so by breaking down complex concepts into simple terms and real-world examples that kids can easily grasp. Black and white photographs help further clarify concepts. In addition to sharing the science, Tallamy encourages kids to take direct action. Some of these ideas include planting an oak tree at home. If that's too large of a task, he suggests they can plant asters--a beautiful flower whose pollen bees use to feed their young.

By helping the next generation see that they have power and agency over our collective future, this empowering book will drive home the positive point that kids are truly nature's best hope.