Spring arrives in the coming week, and it is time to start planning your garden. BWG Library has everything you need to get started – books and seeds!
The BWG Seed Library launched at the beginning of March and BWG Library users may select up to eight packages of seed from our selection of over 60 varieties of vegetable, flowers and herbs. Go to the BWG Library website and click on the link to the seed library and fill out the form. We will put together your order and email you when our seeds are ready.
If you would like to be kept up to date on the BWG Seed Library and other green initiatives at the library, be sure to subscribe to green@bwgpl (or one of our other newsletters) by going to the Newsletter page on our website or by clicking here.
We also have lots of books to help you plan your garden or learn how to take care of it. This week’s picks include just a few of the new books to hit our shelves in the past months.
What Bees Want: beekeeping as nature intended by Susan Knilans and Jacqueline Freeman
Bee populations are plummeting. The solution? Give them what they need to live naturally, and they'll handle the rest. Susan Knilans and Jacqueline Freeman are in love with bees. So in love that they observe their bees - their work, communication, seasonal activity, and more - for hours each day. And with observation came realization: when bees are allowed to live as they would in nature (with smaller hives, no chemicals, freedom to swarm, and little-to-no human interference), they will thrive. Accordingly, Knilans and Freeman have spent decades perfecting the revolutionary practice of preservation beekeeping, guided by the simple question, "What do the bees want?
Gardening Naturally by Laurie Perron
Gardening Naturally offers a wealth of information and practical advice for growing indoor and outdoor plants based on sustainability, a rejection of artificial chemicals, and respect for biodiversity and the natural world. From advice on planning your garden and dealing with disease, insects, and the arrival of cold weather, to tips for starting your own compost, repotting effectively, and choosing which local and native flowers to best attract pollinators, Gardening Naturally will interest anyone who wants to add flowers, edibles, and greenery to their daily life, no matter the size of their balcony or the extent of their garden.
The rooted life : cultivating health & wholeness through growing your own food by Justin Rhodes
Permaculture expert and popular YouTube Homesteader Justin Rhodes shares the skills and the delights of becoming a part of your own food story in this inspiring and accessible and beautiful four-color invitation to a more abundant, healthy, and connected life.
Grow more food: a vegetable gardener's guide to getting the biggest harvest possible from a space of any size by Colin McCrate
How to plan your garden carefully, maximize production in every bed, get the most out of every plant, scale up systems to maximize efficiency, and expand the harvest season with succession planting, intercropping, and season extension.
The orchard book: plan, plant and maintain fruit from garden to field by Wade Muggleton
Wade Muggleton has distilled 20 years of orchard know-how into this practical handbook to help you plan, plant, and manage your orchard, whatever your garden size or budget. With his expert guidance you can have an orchard on any plot - garden, yard, allotment, or smallholding - and both maximize your harvest and minimize your outlay.
