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Compost your old "complete" gardening guide. There's a new way of gardening in Texas that's healthier for people and the environment, more effective at growing vigorous plants and reducing pests, cheaper to maintain, and just more fun. It's Howard Garrett's "The Natural Way" organic gardening program, and it's all here in Texas Gardening the Natural Way.

This book is the first complete, state-of-the-art organic gardening handbook for Texas. Using Howard Garrett's new mainstream gardening techniques, Texas Gardening the Natural Way presents a total gardening program:

• How to plan, plant, and maintain beautiful landscapes without using chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides.
• Gardening fundamentals: soils, landscape design, planting techniques, and maintenance practices.
• Includes more native and adaptable varieties of garden and landscape plants than any other guide on the market.
• Trees: 134 species of evergreens, berry- and fruit-bearing, flowering, yellow fall color, orange fall color, and red fall color.
• Shrubs and specialty plants: 85 species for sun, shade, spring flowering, summer flowering, and treeform shrubs.
• Ground covers and vines: 51 species for sun and shade.
• Annuals and perennials: 136 species for fall color, winter color, summer color in shade and sun, and spring color. Also seeding rates for wildflowers.
• Lawn grasses: 10 species for sun and shade, with additional information on 16 native grasses, seeding rates for 32 grasses, and suggested mowing heights.
• Fruits, nuts, and vegetables: 58 species, with a vegetable planting chart and information on organic pecan and fruit tree growing, fruit varieties for Texas, grape and pecan varieties, and gardening by the moon.
• Common green manure crops: 29 crops that help enrich the soil.
• Herbs: 66 species for culinary and medicinal uses.
• Bugs: 73 types of helpful and harmful bugs, with organic remedies for pests, lists of beneficial bugs and plants that attract them, a beneficial bug release schedule, and sources for beneficial bugs.
• Plant diseases: organic treatments for 55 common problems.
• Organic methods for repelling mice, rabbits, armadillos, beavers, cats, squirrels, and deer.
• Organic management practices: watering, fertilizing, controlling weeds, releasing beneficial insects, biological controls (including bats and purple martins), and recipes for Garrett Juice, fire ant control drench, vinegar herbicide, Sick Tree Treatment, and Tree Trunk Goop.
• Average first and last freeze dates for locations around the state.
• Organic fertilizers and soil amendments: 61 varieties, including full instructions for making compost.
• Organic pest control products: 30 varieties.
• Common house plants and poisonous plants.
• Instructions for climbing vegetable structures and bat houses.
• 833 gorgeous full-color photographs.

A work of natural and environmental history.

That Which Roots Us is a work of natural and environmental history that explores the origins of and resolutions to some of the United States’ environmental problems. Marion Dresner discusses the roots of Euro-American environmental exploitative action, starting with the environmental consequences of having treated Pacific Northwest forests as commodities. She shares her experiences visiting sites where animal-centered ice age culture changed to human-centered culture thousands of years ago with the advent of farming. The book explores the origins of the romantic philosophical movement, which arose out of the debilitating conditions of the industrial era. Those romantic attitudes toward nature inspired the twentieth-century preservation movement and America’s progressively modern conservation attitudes. 

The book is centered around environmental issues in the Pacific Northwest, contrasting utilitarian views of nature with Native American practices of respect and reciprocity. The elements that make That Which Roots Us a truly unique and important contribution to environmental literature are the author’s personal recollections and interactions with the landscape. Ultimately, Dresner offers hope for a new stewardship of the land and a focus on science literacy and direct experience in the natural world as the most grounded way of knowing the planet.

The states of Northern Mexico—Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California Norte and Sur—have architecture, urbanism, and landscape design that offer numerous lessons in how to build well, but this constructed environment is largely undervalued or unknown. To make this architecture better known to a wide professional, academic, and public audience, this book presents the first comprehensive overview in either English or Spanish of the architecture, urban landscapes, and cities of Northern Mexico from the country’s emergence as a modern nation in 1821 to the present day.

Profusely illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, maps, and analytical drawings of urban cores of major cities, The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico systematically examines significant works of architecture in large cities and small towns in each state, from the earliest buildings in the urban core to the newest at the periphery. Edward R. Burian describes the most memorable works of architecture in each city in greater detail in terms of their spatial organization, materials, and sensory experience. He also includes a concise geographical and historical summary of the region that provides a useful background for the discussions of the works of architecture. Burian concludes the book with a brief commentary on lessons learned and possible futures for the architectural culture of the region, as well as the first comprehensive biographical listing of the architects practicing in Northern Mexico during the past two centuries.

The county courthouse has long held a central place on the Texas landscape—literally, as the center of the town in which it is located, and figuratively, as the symbol of governmental authority. As a county’s most important public building, the courthouse makes an architectural statement about a community’s prosperity and aspirations—or the lack of them. Thus, a study of county courthouses tells a compelling story about how society’s relationships with public buildings and government have radically changed over the course of time, as well as how architectural tastes have evolved through the decades.

A first of its kind, The Courthouses of Central Texas offers an in-depth, comparative architectural survey of fifty county courthouses, which serve as a representative sample of larger trends at play throughout the rest of the state. Each courthouse is represented by a description, with information about date(s) of construction and architects, along with a historical photograph, a site plan of its orientation and courthouse square, and two- and sometimes three-dimensional drawings of its facade with modifications over time. Side-by-side drawings and plans also facilitate comparisons between courthouses. These consistently scaled and formatted architectural drawings, which Brantley Hightower spent years creating, allow for direct comparisons in ways never before possible. He also explains the courthouses’ formal development by placing them in their historical and social context, which illuminates the power and importance of these structures in the history of Texas, as well as their enduring relevance today.

John Hanson Mitchell has long written about his garden outside of Boston, and about the plants and animals with whom he shares this land. In 2022, the United Nations and others started reporting the true severity of the climate crisis as the Earth passed a point of no return. All across the globe it was the worst year on record for climate-related disasters, including extinctions, deadly floods, massive fires, and dramatic droughts, all of which have worsened since that year. Mitchell, like so many, felt overwhelmed. He looked to the story of Voltaire’s Candide, and settled on the famous aphorism from that book: “We must cultivate our garden.”

The Garden at the End of Time features Mitchell’s trademark blend of science, literature, and anecdote as he processes both the information he is reading from various sources and what it prompts him to do in his own small corner of the world. The story that unfolds is one of Mitchell diversifying his plantings; fighting what he sees as unnecessary local development; walking through and observing changes in the wild lands nearby; continuing to read the news from around the world; and meditating on other moments, real and imagined, when people sought refuge even as they did their part to improve a personally and collectively stressful situation. 

Readers discover the impossibility of separating gardening from global warming, while also seeing the solace that exposure to plants can offer, in addition to their contribution to carbon consumption. With gravitas, kindness, and wit, Mitchell offers a model for maintaining a connection to nature even as it reels from manmade threats.  

It's all here---step-by-step guidance for gardening success in Michigan's varying soil types and often difficult climate. Veteran garden writer Jerry Minnich presents detailed directions and practical tips for growing vegetables, herbs, flowers, landscaping plants, and house plants, as well as dependable advice on hundreds of garden operations.

Minnich begins where gardening begins---in the soil---as he tells how to build a healthy and productive soil, and how to solve soil problems. In subsequent chapters he reveals composting and mulching techniques, and what to do when the weather is less than congenial for gardens. Minnich describes more than sixty Michigan vegetables, tells how to grow them, and lists recommended varieties for each. There are also chapters on growing fruits, berries, and nuts, and on food storage. Minnich devotes a chapter to growing annuals and perennials, another on lawns, trees, and ornamental woody plants. He tells how to deal with insect and animal pests without using harmful chemicals, and he includes a major section on houseplants.

Throughout, Minnich approaches the subject with experience, wit, and style. Readers will learn how to deal with weeds in the lawn, how to surf the landscape for com-posting materials, and how to grow mulch at home. He explains intercropping, companion planting, seed saving, cover cropping, strip composting and other techniques. He tells how to raise unusual crops such as tomatillos and radicchio, as well as the standard favorites. He explains how the science of phenology can help the gardener, how to take a soil test, how to use earthworms to turn household wastes in to compost, and how to attract birds and toads to the garden. And he lists more than a thousand varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and ornamentals that can be trusted to grow in the Michigan climate.

The Michigan Gardening Guide is the one backyard guide that Michigan gardeners can trust. It is a tool as indispensable as the hoe and the shovel.

Jerry Minnich has written about gardening for more than twenty years and has been commended with a Certificate of Merit by the Garden Writers Association of America. His interest in gardening began when he joined the staff of Organic Gardening in the 1950s.

Did you know . . . ?

• Michigan is seventeenth in oil production in the United States.
• The Great Lakes are said to be the only glacially produced structures that can be seen from the moon.
• Michigan was once part of a coral reef.
• The wood frog is one of the commonest true frogs of moist woodland floors in Michigan today and is able to freeze solid during the winter without harmful effects.

These and many more amazing facts await the curious traveler in The Michigan Roadside Naturalist, J. Alan and Margaret B. Holman's captivating guide to the natural treasures of Michigan. A perfect accompaniment to the classic Michigan Trees and The Forests of Michigan, this user-friendly guide offers a Who's Who of the geology, biology, and archaeology of the Great Lakes State, as well as highway adventures along the state's major routes.

The book begins with an educational yet accessible tour of important points in Michigan's natural and archaeological history, followed by seven road trips based on commonly traveled state routes, moving from south to north in the Lower Peninsula and east to west in the Upper Peninsula. Readers can proceed directly to the road trips or familiarize themselves with the state's treasure trove of fascinating features before embarking. Either way, an informative and fun odyssey awaits the passionate naturalist, amateur or otherwise.

J. Alan Holman is Curator Emeritus of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Michigan State University Museum and Emeritus Professor of Geology and Zoology at Michigan State University. Margaret B. Holman is Research Associate at Michigan State University Museum and Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University.

A full-color photographic journey around the Great Lakes
 
Locals affectionately call the Great Lakes the “third coast”—though at 4,500 miles, this beloved freshwater shoreline is the nation’s longest, covering more distance than the country’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts combined.
 
Divided into four galleries by lake and season, David Zurick’s award-winning photographs spotlight the distinct personality of each coastline and the people who call its shores home. We visit windswept Lake Superior in winter, Lake Michigan bursting into spring, Lakes Erie and Ontario under the summer sun, and Lake Huron in the changing palette of autumn, with an additional gallery devoted to the straits and rivers that connect them. An evocative foreword from award-winning nature writer Jerry Dennis sets the stage for this sweeping visual tour.
 
In Zurick’s photographs, lifelong lovers of the Great Lakes will find the familiar shorelines of coastal hometowns, summer refuges, and secret fishing spots—as well as images that reawaken us to the majesty and mystery of North America’s “freshwater seas.”
 

In the work of literary resurrection there is always a small act of defiance. The Two Worlds of William March by Roy S. Simmonds restores to view one of the most remarkable and least celebrated American writers of the twentieth century. With intelligence, restraint, and a keen eye for contradiction, Simmonds traces March’s path from Alabama beginnings through war, business success, and literary achievement. The result is more than a biography. It is an inquiry into the making of a writer whose novels continue to unsettle, disturb, and illuminate long after the fashions of his age have passed. 

What lingers is the paradox of William March himself. He was a man of outward accomplishment who remained drawn to the hidden regions of experience. He wrote memorably of war without glamorizing it, and of evil without simplifying it. Unlike so many public literary figures, he seemed to cultivate disappearance rather than celebrity. The silence around him became part of the story. Simmonds treats that silence not as a void but as evidence, revealing a complex and deeply observant mind at work beneath an unusually quiet life. 

The questions that occupied March remain with us. How well do we know ourselves? What lies beneath ordinary behavior? How does experience become art? For readers of Southern literature, literary biography, American history, war literature, psychology, Alabama culture, and twentieth-century fiction, this book offers both discovery and reconsideration. It will especially appeal to those who suspect that the most revealing stories are often hidden in plain sight.

Through interviews and a generous photograph montage stretching over two decades, reveals the commonality and diversity among these people of Indian identity

When DeSoto (in 1540) and later Juan Pardo (in 1567) marched through what was known as the province of Cofitachequi (which covered the southern part of today’s North Carolina and most of South Carolina), the native population was estimated at well over 18,000. Most shared a common Catawba language, enabling this confederation of tribes to practice advanced political and social methods, cooperate and support each other, and meet their common enemy. The footprint of the Cofitachequi is the footprint of this book.

The contemporary Catawba, Midland, Santee, Natchez-Kusso, Varnertown, Waccamaw, Pee Dee, and Lumbee Indians of North and South Carolina, have roots in pre-contact Cofitachequi. Names have changed through the years; tribes split and blended as the forces of nature, the influx of Europeans, and the imposition of federal government authority altered their lives. For a few of these tribes, the system has worked well—or is working well now. For others, the challenge continues to try to work with and within the federal government’s system for tribal recognition—a system governing Indians but not created by them. Through interviews and a generous photograph montage stretching over two decades, Gene Crediford reveals the commonality and diversity among these people of Indian identity; their heritage, culture, frustrations with the system, joys in success of the younger generation, and hope for the future of those who come after them. This book is the story of those who remain.
 

Tierra Santa follows photographer Carolyn Brown into the Americas, from the temple mountains of the Maya and the kivas of the Pueblo Southwest to the candlelit churches of colonial Mexico and Guatemala. Over decades of travel, Brown has photographed wherever people have recognized something holy, whether an ancient plaza open to the sky or a village chapel at the end of a dirt road.

The photographs do more than document. In a bank of flickering candles and a hillside terraced into a pyramid, Brown finds the vitality that many cultures have felt in these places—the sense that earth and sky were already sacred and that human beings have only answered its call. Essays by leading scholars of archaeology, anthropology, and colonial history trace how successive peoples made room for the divine. Brown's own reflections close the book with a pilgrimage through the Sierra Gorda.

Together, the images and essays offer an invitation to look slowly and to notice. Stay with them long enough and these places begin to stir memory and awe, along with a profound sense that the sacred was here long before we arrived and remains, patiently, wherever we're willing to see it.

Exploring the shared storytelling traditions that shaped Southern literature across racial lines.

Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White is a study of the historical use of oral storytelling by southern writers in written works. In each chapter, Sarah Gilbreath Ford pairs a white and an African American writer to highlight points of confluence in black and white southern oral traditions. She argues that the connections between white and African American southern writers run deeper than critics have yet explored, and she uses textual comparisons to examine the racial mixing of oral culture.

On porches, in kitchens, and on the pages of their work, black and white southerners exchanged not just stories but strategies for telling stories. As a boy, Joel Chandler Harris listened to the stories of African American slaves, and he devised a framework to turn the oral stories into written ones. Harris’s use of the frame structure influenced how Charles Chesnutt recorded oral stories, but it led Alice Walker to complain that her heritage had been stolen. Mark Twain listened to African American storytellers as a child. His use of oral dialects then impacts how Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner employ oral storytelling and how Toni Morrison later writes in response to Faulkner. The interactions are not linear, not a chain of influence, but a network of interactions, borrowings, and revisions.

Ford’s pairings lead to new readings that reveal how the writers employ similar strategies in their narratives, due in part to shared historical context. While Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner, for example, use oral storytelling in the 1930s to examine the fear of racial mixing, Ellen Douglas and Ernest Gaines use it in the 1970s to build bridges between the races. Exploring the cultural crossing that occurs in the use of oral storytelling, Ford offers a different view of this common strategy in southern narrative and a new perspective on how culture is shared.

An arborist’s lifelong journey reveals the deep connections between people and trees.
Bruce Allison has spent decades listening to trees and making sense of what they tell us. In this intimate and absorbing memoir, he deftly weaves personal stories, botanical insights, and moments of wonder and revelation into a captivating ode to trees.
Trees as a Way of Life follows Allison on his journey from seedling to sapling to maturity, as he explores a eucalyptus grove as a boy in Bonita, California; learns the tree ethic as an apprentice arborist in Baltimore, Maryland; and establishes his own tree care company in Madison, Wisconsin. After more than fifty years as a professional arborist, he tells stories of stewarding the trees at the Wisconsin State Capitol and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, among other sites, and describes formative encounters with notable tree-loving clients, including American Girl creator Pleasant Rowland and Epic Systems founder Judith Faulkner. As he tells his own story, Allison incorporates the voices and stories of renowned naturalists like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson.
Allison also uses his own tree encounters as jumping-off points for deep dives into individual species, memorable moments in tree history, and tips and tricks for tree care and maintenance. As only an accomplished arborist and educator could, he provides a detailed-yet-accessible tutorial on trees, from the upper canopy of stem and crown, through the veil of bark, to the hidden underground landscape of tree roots and fungi.
In the tradition of the international bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees, this book carries readers root by root and limb by limb to a deeper understanding of the trees that feed us, protect us, shade us, and inspire us. In an engaging narrative style that blends the personal, the scientific, and the poetic, Allison’s story is an intimate love letter to trees, a master class in understanding and appreciating them, and an invitation to readers who also long to make trees a way of life.