A Woman's Garden

Book excerpt: 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.