Last lazy weekend of summer? Here are five books good enough to keep you awake even while you're lying in a hammock:
Above: Photograph by Erin Boyle.
Here are cocktail-friendly plants from the garden from author Amy Stewart, whose The Drunken Botanist offers amusing facts about history, horticulture, and mixology. The Gin and Tonic recipe is a real keeper, by the way.
Above: Are you starting to think about planning the spring garden? In Planting: A New Perspective, superstar garden designer Piet Oudolf offers detailed planting plans for how to get his unstudied "layered look."
Above: In The Edible Balcony, British author Alex Mitchell offers urban gardeners tips on how to turn even the tiniest space into a thriving kitchen garden.
Above: Itching to break out the glue gun? Bring the Outdoors In by Shane Powers offers step-by-step instructions for 20 DIY projects featuring live and dried plants.
Above: British gardener Christopher Lloyd was the champion of the modern cottage garden—and champion of the cozy, rambling essay that exalts same. In The Adventurous Gardener, you can pick up tips on the basics: pruning hydrangeas ("delay until spring"); growing violets from seed ("sow in a pot or box in autumn"), and paving a path ("square blocks look unbearably monotonous"). Take him with a cup of tea.
Browse through 47 more of our favorite Cookbooks, Landscape Design Books, and Required Reading reviews.