Books by Lorene
Handmade Garden Projects: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creative Garden Features, Containers, Lighting & More
You can transform your garden into a handmade, personality-infused oasis.
Projects run the gamut from eye-catching structures, like a pergola made from plumbing pipes, to imaginative details, like a tree-hung chandelier for nighttime ambiance. You’ll also find helpful plant guides to accompany projects: delectable herbs to fill a stacking container tower, stellar succulents for a vertical gutter garden, glorious flowering vines to climb a bamboo obelisk, and so much more.
I’ll be frank – sometimes it’s hard to blow one’s own horn. But it’s always nice to hear what others are saying about Handmade Garden Projects:
“Whimsy is the watchword here, even as Forkner provides full-color photos, practical conversion tables, hardiness zones, and resources listings in this innovative addition to DIY creativity.” (Booklist )
“A cocktail of decorative garden projects, some labor intensive, others quickly accomplished, all fused with the now familiar aesthetic of urban rusticity that comes of repurposing inexpensive materials and reusing found objects.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“The book is filled with ideas for turning unused items and common materials into decorative and functional garden accents.” (Akron Beacon Journal)
“This is so strange looking at our backyard!”
(My kids , Hilary & Max upon first seeing the finished book!)
Ready to get started? All you need are refreshingly simple, inexpensive materials – hardware store basics, salvaged goods, repurposed castoffs from cluttered basements – along with a little do-it-yourself spirit. With clear instructions and inspiring variations on every theme, this book is easy to follow and easy to love. Your journey to a made-from-scratch outdoor space starts here.
Growing Your Own Vegetables: An Encyclopedia of Country Living Guide
Whether you’re tired of rising supermarket prices or you have a green thumb but need a little guidance, Growing Your Own Vegetables is a handy guide to becoming more self-reliant in the garden. Drawn from the authors’ years of hands-on experience and expert advice from the best-selling Encyclopedia of Country Living, this guide is a complete manual for creating a vegetable garden, including planning, size considerations, seasonal conditions, climate zones, and other cultivation basics. The second part of the book is a crop-by-crop guide to planting, cultivating, and harvesting the delicious vegetables we love to eat: onions, leafy greens, stems and flowers (rhubarb, artichoke, broccoli), roots (spuds, radishes, jicama), grasses and grains (just imagine: your own wheat field!), legumes, gourds, and the nightshade family (that would be tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant). Packed full of information, Growing Your Own Vegetables is an invaluable resource for home gardeners of all stripes.
Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest: An Encyclopedia of Country Living Guide
Equipped with the knowledge of when to harvest, how to harvest, and what supplies are needed to preserve your harvest, anyone can learn what it takes to create authentic, old-fashioned recipes in this age of supermarket dependence. Carla Emery’s in-depth knowledge comes from her years spent with farmers and homesteaders who truly lived off the land. Culling from and expanding on sections in the famed Encyclopedia of Country Living, co-author Lorene Forkner offers a discussion of our changing motivation as food consumers, detailed explanations of the processes behind canning and preserving, and a wealth of recipes for fruits, vegetables, meats and fish, and herbs. From drying to pickling to freezing, Emery’s preserving methods are as broad in scope as the recipes themselves. Do-it-yourselfers can welcome summer’s arrival with Chunky Peach Jam and Oven-Dried Tomatoes, or host a fall harvest with fresh Herb Bouquets and Smoked Chicken. Step-by-step instructions, illustrations, charts, and informational sidebars make the process easy and enjoyable.
Hortus Miscellaneous: A Gardener’s Hodgepodge of Information and Instruction
Where does botany start but with the naming and grouping of all flora? Inspired by Schott’s Original Miscellany, the book contains entries practical (the 15 ornamental plants that deer won’t eat) and impractical (the flower on the grave of famed gardener Gertrude Jekyll). Hortus Miscellaneous includes thematic planting lists (blue flowers, night-blooming, shade ground covers); historic gardens (from Babylon to Central Park); size matters (biggest trees, longest root, heaviest cabbage); topiary; state flowers; maze patterns; mulch formulas; and much more.
