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100 books match the query 'Flowers' and 6 start with a
A Backyard Prairie
The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and WildflowersFred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis
Southern Illinois University Press, 2021
In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over the next seventeen years, Delcomyn, with help from his friend James L. Ellis scored, seeded, monitored, reseeded, and burned these acres into prairie. In A Backyard Prairie, they document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows. It has been said, “Anyone can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.” This book shows us how.
The first book to celebrate a smaller, more private restoration, A Backyard Prairie offers a vivid portrait of what makes a prairie. Delcomyn and Ellis describe selecting and planting seeds, recount the management of a prescribed fire, and capture the prairie’s seasonal parades of colorful flowers in concert with an ever-growing variety of animals, from the minute eastern tailed-blue butterfly to the imperious red-winged blackbird and the reclusive coyote.
This book offers a unique account of their work and their discovery of a real backyard, an inviting island of grass and flowers uncovered and revealed. We often travel miles and miles to find nature larger than ourselves. In this rich account of small prairie restoration, Delcomyn and Ellis encourage the revival of original prairie in our backyards and the patient, beauty-seeking soul sleeping within ourselves.
A Flora of Southern Illinois
Robert H. Mohlenbrock
Southern Illinois University Press, 1974
This book will be of particular interest to those interested in applied fields of biology, such as conservation, forestry, and wild life. The southern twelve counties of Illinois, a total of 4,355square miles, comprise the area covered in this book. It is an area in which both northern and southern flora specimens abound. A wide variety of plant species grow in this area, and nearly 200 new plants not formerly identified with this area have been included in the listings.
Especially valuable to amateur botanists, the book is an important manual in identifying the plants that make up the native scenery of this region. Seventy-seven illustrations aid in identifying and understanding the plant communities.
A Rock Garden in the South
Elizabeth A. Lawrence
Duke University Press, 1990
Lawrence, in her usual exquisite prose, deals with the full range of rock gardening topics in this work. She addresses the unique problem of cultivating rock gardens in the South, where the growing season is prolonged and humidity and heat are not conducive to such planting. She describes her own experiences in making a rock garden, with excellent advice on placing stones, constructing steps, ordering plants, and making cuttings.
At the same time, what she writes about here is in large part of interest to gardeners everywhere and for gardens with or without rocks. As always, she thoroughly discusses the plants she has tried—recommending bulbs and other perennials of all sorts, annuals, and woody plants—with poetic descriptions of the plants themselves as well as specific and useful cultural advice. A Rock Garden in the South includes an encyclopedia of plants alphabetized by genus and species and divided into two parts: wood and non-woody plants.
All about Flowers
James Vick's Nineteenth-Century Seed CompanyThomas J. Mickey
Ohio University Press, 2021
A nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies.
“There is much that is hard and productive of sorrow in this sin-plagued world of ours; and, had we no flowers, I believe existence would be hard to be borne.” So states a customer’s 1881 letter—one of thousands James Vick regularly received. Vick’s business, selling flower seeds through the mail, wasn’t unique, but it was wildly successful because he understood better than his rivals how to engage customers’ emotions. He sold the love of flowers along with the flower seeds.
Vick was genuinely passionate about floriculture, but he also pioneered what we now describe as integrated marketing. He spent a mind-boggling $100,000 per year on advertising (mostly to women, his target demographic); he courted newspaper editors for free publicity; his educational guides presaged today’s content marketing; he recruited social influencers to popularize neighborhood gardening clubs; and he developed a visually rich communication and branding strategy to build customer loyalty and inflect their purchasing needs with purchasing desire.
An Abundance of Flowers
More Great Flower Breeders of the PastJudith M. Taylor
Ohio University Press, 2018
Walk into any nursery, florist, or supermarket, and you’ll encounter displays of dozens of gorgeous flowers, from chrysanthemums to orchids. At one time these fanciful blooms were the rare trophies of the rich and influential—even the carnation, today thought of as one of the humblest cut flowers. Every blossom we take for granted now is the product of painstaking and imaginative planning, breeding, horticultural ingenuity, and sometimes chance. The personalities of the breeders, from an Indiana farmer to Admiral Lord Gambier’s gardener, were as various and compelling as the beauty they conjured from skilled hybridization.
In Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders of the Past, Judith Taylor wrote engagingly about the vivid history and characters behind eighteen types of popular flowers. In this companion volume she uncovers information about another eight familiar flowers: poinsettias, chrysanthemums, gladioli, pansies, carnations, water lilies, clematis, and penstemons.
Taylor has tapped into an enormous trove of stories about extraordinary people with vision and skill who added to our enjoyment piece by piece, starting about 150 years ago. This beautifully illustrated book will please flower enthusiasts, gardeners, and history buffs alike.
Arrows Tipped with Flowers
Threshold Theory for Transformative LearningJulie Geredien
University of Illinois Press, 2026
Threshold theory challenges unexamined mental habits and exposes absolutisms that hold social order by impeding the comprehension process. As those learning at the threshold approach transition and the unknown, they participate in transformations that illuminate hidden developmental patterns and ecological relationships. Geredien’s threshold theorizing brings together realities at the heart of creativity, relational worldview, and anti-oppression work to forge the philosophical and psychological foundations necessary to reshape policies and practices.
Innovative and expansive, Arrows Tipped with Flowers reveals the psychology of integrity that underpins truly global learning and explains the need to develop more inclusive and reflective approaches to knowledge formation.