A Woman's Garden: Grow Beautiful Plants and Make Useful Things

Led by beautiful photography, take an inspirational tour around the garden for helpful growing advice and step-by-step instructions for creating over 35 projects, edibles, and art from your garden.

In A Woman’s Garden, the creative force behind LovelyGreens.com, Tanya Anderson, shares the great variety of ways you can use the power of plants for home and health.

Gardens grow more than just pretty flowers. They grow well-being and a deeper connection with nature. Gardens can also produce plant material for creating homemade skincare, natural dyes, artisan crafts, delicious foods and beverages, and medicines—homegrown ways to create a wholesome lifestyle.

Making things with your hands and heart, and then sharing the fruits of your labors with friends and family, is both satisfying and soul-stirring. Learn how to grow dozens of plants and then transform them into gorgeous items to nurture yourself or gift to others. 

• Visit the kitchen garden where you will find tips for growing your own produce and learn how to make a strawberry planter from a pallet.
• Embrace the joys of edible flowers—learn to make floral ice cubes and food featuring flowers, both savory and sweet.
• Enjoy the flavors and scents of culinary herbs, which you will learn to use to enhance cooking oils, drinks, and pasta.
• Grow and harvest plants and flowers to make skin care products such as herbal bath fizzies, lavender and alkanet soap, and more.
• Grow plants for herbal medicine, including chamomile for calming tea and calendula for healing minor cuts and scrapes.
• Cultivate an array of plants with uses around the home, including rosemary and citrus kitchen-cleaning spray and lavender for scenting linens.
• Brighten your world with plants for dyeing wool and cloth—learn methods for extracting color from a rainbow of different plants, including goldenrod, onions, and butterfly pea flower.
• Make a garden that overflows with creativity by crafting garden makes such as fossil imprint stepping-stones, papier-mache leaf lanterns, and pressed flower candles.

In addition to a wealth of hands-on projects, you’ll take a trip around the globe and visit the gardens of 8 women, including Deanna Talerico from Homestead and Chill, Ashlie Thomas from The Mocha Gardener, Melissa Will from The Empress of Dirt, Rekha Mistry from Rekha’s Garden and Kitchen, Giovanna Becker from Herbstead, in addition to several others.

Find inspiration, healing, health, and happiness right outside your own backdoor with A Woman's Garden.

"This book is a treat for the eyes and felt like balm for the mind. Filled with beautiful, rich photographs and tours through cleverly designed gardens from eight creative female gardeners. It offers a perfect mix of information, inspiration, and ideas to try at home."-- Liz Zorab, author of Grounded, and gardening personality behind Byther Farm

"An inspiring, galvanizing, and hugely practical guide to growing and using your garden for health and wellbeing, both inside and out. This will help anybody to understand the healing nature of plants and how the relationship between women and our gardens can benefit both us and the plants we nurture." -- Frances Tophill, presenter for BBC Gardeners' World and ITV's Love Your Garden


"What a delightful book this is - full of fresh, exciting ideas and filled with projects for anyone who loves their garden. It does what all good gardening books should do, which is to make you want to rush out to your own plot and start planting." -- Constance Craig Smith, Garden Media Guild co-chair


"A Woman's Garden is an inspiring, beautiful, and also practical book. It taps into today's desire to grow our own food and create things from plants, such as homemade skincare, candles, and plant dyes. There are eight gardeners and their gardens featured, each of which specializes in a different plant food or craft, plus useful projects as to how to make soap, planters, floral ice-cubes, and more. And Tanya explains how to start growing and using plants in an easy-to-follow and readable way." -- Alexandra Campbell of the Middlesized Garden


'A celebration of femininity in the garden and an innovative and important book, this will expand the horizons of seasoned gardeners, while being accessible for beginners.'

-- Jack Wallington, RHS The Garden

Table of Contents:
Introduction

THE EDIBLE GARDEN
1 The Kitchen Garden
Deanna's Garden
Gallery of Homegrown Produce
Creating a New Vegetable Garden
Pallet Strawberry Planter
Growing Salad Greens
A Berry Delicious Garden
Low-Maintenance Edibles
2 Edible Flowers
Jan's Garden
Gallery of Edible Flowers
Edible Flowers in Your Garden
Edible Flower Planter
Floral Ice Cubes
Edible Flower Frittata
Lavender Shortbread
3 Culinary Herbs
Rekha's Garden
Gallery of Culinary Herbs
Growing Culinary Herbs
DIY Herb Spiral
Herb-Infused Oil
Three-Mint Mojito
Herb-Embedded Pasta

HEALTH AND BEAUTY
4 Plants For Skin care
Tanya's Garden
Gallery of Skin Care Plants
Growing Plants for Skin Care
Creating Botanical Extracts
Rose Petal Facial Mist
Herbal Bath Fizzies
Lavender and Alkanet Soap
5 Herbal Medicine
Giovanna's Garden
Gallery of Medicinal Plants
A Home Herbalist's Garden
Growing Chamomile for Tea
Chamomile Tincture
Calendula Skin Salve
Lemon Balm Cold Sore Balm

HOME AND CRAFTS
6 Herbs For The home
Ashlie's Garden
Gallery of Plants for the Home
Growing a Home Garden
Raised Garden Bed
Rosemary and Citrus Kitchen Spray
Natural Wood Furniture Polish
Soapwort Multipurpose Cleaner
7 Natural Plant Dyes
Teresinha's Garden
Gallery of Plants with Natural Color
Growing a Dye Garden
Using Dye Plants
Dyeing Yarn with Onion Skins
Naturally Coloring Handmade Soap
8 The Crafty Garden
Melissa's Garden
Gallery of Creative Garden Makes
A Creative and Low-Cost Garden
Fossil Imprint Stepping-Stone
Pressed Flower Candles
Papier-Mâché Leaf Lanterns

A Word of Thanks
About the Author
Index

Tanya Anderson is an organic gardener, soap maker, beekeeper, and beauty producer on the Isle of Man in the UK. Tanya is the creative force behind the website and YouTube channel Lovely Greens. Followers subscribe to her for her creative garden ideas and positive, friendly personality.

When she's not publishing gardening and plant-based beauty ideas, she's retailing her own line of beauty products. Lovely Greens Handmade crafts natural soaps, beeswax skincare products, and candles. She also hosts monthly creative workshops, is a regular gardening-guest on an a local radio station, and helps manage an allotment (community garden).

Cool Springs Press

Pub Date:  April 27, 2021

0.6" H x 9.9" L x 7.9" W

192 pages

paperback