Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Gardening & Horticulture

A much-loved classic of nature writing from environmentalist and the author of Waterlog, Roger Deakin, Wildwood is an exploration of the element wood in nature, our culture and our lives. From the walnut tree at his Suffolk home, he embarks upon a quest that takes him through Britain, across Europe, to Central Asia and Australia, in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with wood and trees.

Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. Now in her 84th year, Lively writes, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."

When Summer Rayne Oakes moved to Brooklyn from the Pennsylvania countryside, she knew that bringing nature indoors was her only chance to stay sane. She found them by the side of the road, in long-forgotten window boxes, at farmers' markets, and in local garden shops. She found ways to shelve, hang, tuck, anchor, secure, and suspend them. She even installed 150-foot expandable hose that connects to pipes under her kitchen sink, so she only has to spend about a half-hour a day tending to her plants - an activity that she describes as a "moving meditation". T

The Garden Jungle is about the wildlife that lives right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in the pavement and in the soil beneath our feet. Wherever you are right now, the chances are that there are worms, woodlice, centipedes, flies, silverfish, wasps, beetles, mice, shrews and much, much more, quietly living within just a few paces of you.

Imagine cultivating enough food to slash your grocery shopping in half--all in less than an hour a day in your own backyard. Sounds impossible, right? Marjory Wildcraft says it's not: She's been homesteading for almost twenty years and founded The Grow Network to teach hundreds of thousands of others—some with very little space or time, some city dwellers with rooftop gardens—how to do the same, from gardening, to raising chickens, to composting, to medicine-making.

Growing up in an ex-mining town in Nottinghamshire, Arthur Parkinson never wanted a dog, or a cat, or a pony - just hens. As a kid, he was known as 'chicken boy', a taunt Arthur now proudly reclaims with his crested coterie that includes countless hens, from Sheila the white Silkie to Clarissa the champagne-coloured Buff Cochin. A personal and humorous memoir of Arthur's life amongst his hens, this is an invitation to discover the joy that is only possible in the company of these intriguing creatures.

Journalist and self-proclaimed “crappy gardener” Tamar Haspel is on a mission: to show us that raising or gathering our own food is not as hard as it’s often made out to be. When she and her husband move from Manhattan to two acres on Cape Cod, they decide to adopt a more active approach to their diet: raising chickens, growing tomatoes, even foraging for mushrooms and hunting their own meat. They have more ambition than practical know-how, but that’s not about to stop them from trying…even if sometimes their reach exceeds their (often muddy) grasp.

In search of a quieter, simpler life, style icon and longtime New Yorker Amanda Brooks moved with her family in 2012 from New York City to her husband's farm in England. Originally intended to be a yearlong creative sabbatical, Brooks's relocation became permanent as she discovered newfound personal and professional freedom, told here through a year's changing seasons. Creatively inspiring, warm and witty, and brimming with delicious recipes and entertaining how-tos, Farm from Home is a chronicle of the joys and challenges of a more focused way of living.