I’ve spent several decades immersed in the world of interior design. As a writer and creative director, I’ve worked alongside many, many talented decorators and architects and seen how they’ve enhanced people’s lives by creating beautiful, practical living spaces. To my mind, if one truly feels inspired and at ease in one’s home environment the chance of living an authentic, fulfilling life increases significantly. All the books I’ve written emphasize the importance I place on thoughtful design. A partial list includes Shoes: A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers & More; Brilliant: White in Design, Stripes: Design Between The Lines; Heart and Home: Rooms That Tell Stories, and Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms. I live in Upstate New York where my house is surrounded by a fledgling fragrance garden.
I wrote
Inside Outside: A Sourcebook of Inspired Garden Rooms
Known as the First Lady of interior decoration, de Wolfe (1865-1950) excelled in a predominantly male profession which she is credited with inventing. Her book which, is still thought of as a decorator’s bible, was first published in 1913. It’s a compilation of several of her chatty magazine articles so even though her clientele was elite the strong doses of common sense, wit, and sophistication in her voice have mass appeal. Described as an ornamental minimalist she upturned the oppressiveness of the Victorian and Edwardian sensibility by avoiding clutter, dark colors, and heavy draperies in favor of sparsely furnished, naturally lit rooms (which she considered to be optimistic) that seamlessly aligned themselves with their natural surroundings. In that sense, she was one of the first decorators to acknowledge nature and to emphasize the importance of incorporating garden and exterior views into interior planning.
I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it what you will—awakening, development, American Renaissance—it is a most startling and promising condition of affairs. It is no longer possible, even to people of only faintly æsthetic tastes, to buy chairs merely to sit upon or a clock merely that it should tell the time. Home-makers are determined to have their houses, outside and in, correct according to the best standards. What do we mean by the best standards? Certainly not those of the useless,…
All the anecdotes in this book are soundly supported by scientific research and prove the existing, familial dynamic shared by trees. Insightfully written by a forester and woodsman, we learn how trees, just like any tribe, interact with and watch out for each other through an intricate, underground social network which is crucial to a forest’s survival and growth. Wohlleben illustrates how maples, oaks, birches, and pines are not only sensitive to color but also hear and feel. After reading this, talking to plants is anything but an eccentric pastime.
"A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement that will make you acknowledge your own entanglement in the ancient and ever-new web of being."--Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben…
Activating Our 12-Stranded DNA
by
Ruslana Remennikova,
In this vibrant guidebook, sound healer and former corporate scientist Ruslana Remennikova reveals how, through vibration and intention, you can shapeshift DNA from the standard double helix to its 12-stranded, dodecahedral form—unlocking your spiritual potential and opening the way for deep healing of the past, the present, and the future…
Even though her heroine is Vita Sackville-West who, in the 1930s, created Sissinghurst, one of the world’s most visited gardens, I think of Benson as a hippy, outdoors version of Martha Stewart. In this paperback, her fast lane, quick gratification approach to gardening comes across with equal doses of humor as she emphasizes the joy of digging one’s hands into the soil and the importance of channeling one’s own aesthetic into hedge and plant choices. Her opinions are pithy, to say the least - she considers marigolds to be ‘hackneyed’ flowers; she talks about weeds having brains and calls the green thumb notion a fallacy - but her passion for nature, which shines through on every page, is contagious.
This is an Authors Guild/BIP title. Please use Author's Guild/BIP specs. Author Bio: Designer, writer, lecturer, and once-owner of four highly innovative fashion stores called Dianne B., Dianne Benson has been described as "A woman of fashion, a fabulous purveyor of words, stance, and attitude." She took up gardening with a fervor twelve years ago at the East Hampton home she shares with her husband and their dogs. Book description: Dirt digs with humor and depth into the fine art of gardening with a highly unique style. With unrestrained excess, style-setter Dianne Benson has written a gardening primer so vivid…
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was arguably the first architect to become a household name and therefore the first ‘starchitect’. To his way of conceptualizing, nature, with a capital N, came first and last in the sense that it would outlive and eventually envelop any edifice he happened to place upon it. This book uses black and white photography to succinctly illustrate his chief philosophical points and helps explain why his houses co-exist so seamlessly with their natural environment or, in his words, why they are in love with the ground. Inspired by the patterning of rock strata, the texture of birch bark, the spines of tree limbs, the blush of summer blossoms, in his projects it’s often hard to discern where nature and the man-made begin or end. ”Buildings, too,” he often said, “are children of earth and sun.”
Profusely illustrated study of nature — especially the prairie — on Wright's designs for Fallingwater, Robie House, Guggenheim Museum, other masterpieces.
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
Goldsworthy is an English artist and environmentalist who uses natural materials - woven birch, frosted oak and sycamore branches, a boulder sheathed in poppy leaves, hollowed-out damp sand - to create land sculptures, assemblages, and site installations in fields, forests, and lakesides. When I first came across his beautifully ephemeral work - snow melts, leaves decay, a wave disintegrates sand - it made me realize that a gardener needs to appreciate the beauty of all the seasons. His work has helped me to redefine my definition of a garden’s death which is rather nature’s dormant phase; its period of transition leading to rebirth. Goldsworthy photographed all the coffee table-sized book’s images, each one a visual haiku.
Inside Outside chronicles 25 different gardens, throughout the world from Paris to Palm Beach to Poughkeepsie as it expounds on the theory that landscaping and interior design are two sides of the same coin. A few shared characteristics of well-designed rooms and gardens include spatial awareness, strong proportions, an emphasis on texture, energizing and/or calming colors, strategically placed accessories, and a palpable sense of place. I also talk about symmetry, rhythm, informality, humor, harmony, flow, layering, suitability, and integration in an effort to bring the outdoors inside and vice versa. I hope the book inspires people to personalize their own outdoor spaces.
This is not an insect book--it is a history book, but one that tells the history you didn't learn in school, or it tells the history in a way you never imagined. Five insects had a significant impact on human history. Silkworm moth, Oriental rat flea, human body louse, yellow…
Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old?
by
Joy Loverde,
Everything you need to know to plan for your own safe, financially secure, healthy, and happy old age.
For those who have no support system in place, the thought of aging without help can be a frightening, isolating prospect. Whether you have friends and family ready and able to help…