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Recently, thousands of North American schools have begun to take a critical look at their grounds and realize the enormous potential for transforming barren expanses of asphalt into a diversity of exciting natural spaces for learning and playing.

This compendium of articles from Green Teacher, North America's leading environmental education magazine, brings together the best strategies for school-ground renewal. Greening School Grounds provides an overview of the school grounds greening movement, complete project plans, and subject integration. From vegetable and butterfly gardens to an amphibian oasis and avian attractors, this comprehensive guide offers a trove of curriculum tie-ins, activities, and plans for educators, parents, and students.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $19.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

The term "guerrilla" may bring to mind a small band of armed soldiers, moving in the dead of night on a stealth mission. In the case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are planters, the weapons are shovels, and the mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing of beauty. Once an environmentalist's nonviolent direct action for inner-city renewal, this approach to urban beautification is spreading to all types of people in cities around the world.

These modern-day Johnny Appleseeds perform random acts of gardening, often without the property owner's prior knowledge or permission. Typical targets are vacant lots, railway land, underused public squares and back alleys. The concept is simple, whimsical and has the cheeky appeal of being a not-quite-legal call to action. Dig in some soil, plant a few seeds, or mend a sagging fence ... one good deed inspiring another, with win-win results all around.

Guerrilla Gardening outlines the power-to-the-people campaign for greening our cities. Tips for effective involvement cover:

• finding plants and seeds cheap (or free)
• handling city officials
• getting the dirt on soil
• planting to bring back the birds
• knowing when to ask permission and when to seek forgiveness.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $19.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

More than a dozen years ago, Ted Bernard travelled to nine communities across the United States to meet residents who were working collaboratively to solve natural resource conflicts. While there may have been different perspectives over process, their common goal was to achieve higher levels of sustainability as vibrant communities. He visited places as diverse as tiny one-square-mile Monhegan Island in Maine and cities as large as Chicago and Chattanooga, and with Jora Young, wrote about their findings in 1997 in The Ecology of Hope.

Now Bernard has caught up with these communities again to discover their progress, and see what a difference their collaborative conservation has made. Hope and Hard Times chronicles that journey; the successes, the speed bumps, and the remarkable tenacity and persistence of the partnerships and initiatives driving change during exceedingly hard times. Overall, community-based sustainability initiatives have proved resilient, despite the down-spiraling of the global economy and the looming problems of global climate change. Their quest points to the need for new perceptions of nature and of humankind, more guidance from nature, and less consumption and materialism. They offer advice on how to live on pieces of land without spoiling them.

Offering hopeful roadmaps for other communities working toward a sustainable future, this book will appeal to community activists, natural resource professionals, educators, and environmentalists.

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The 20th century saw unprecedented growth in population, energy consumption and food production. As the population shifted from rural to urban, human impacts on the environment increased dramatically.

The 21st century ushered in an era of declines, including:

• Oil, natural gas and coal extraction
• Yearly grain harvests
• Climate stability
• Economic growth
• Fresh water
• Minerals and ores, such as copper and platinum

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For more than a decade, this best-selling title has helped countless gardeners produce bountiful harvests of organic vegetables. Now, Ed Smith is back with a thoroughly revised and updated second edition, including coverage of 15 additional vegetables; an expanded section on salad greens; more attention to European and Asian vegetables; growing information on more fruits and herbs; new cultivar photographs; a much-requested section on extending the growing season into the winter months; and more. No vegetables are healthier, fresher, less expensive, or more local than the ones you grow in your own back yard. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible will show you how.

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These 150 quick-and-easy recipes turn bumper crops into mouthwatering pickles and relishes, using little or no salt. All techniques meet current USDA guidelines.

New recipes for today's cooks include:

• Freezer pickles that can be prepared in less than half an hour
• Salt-free pickles for dieters
• Sweet Pickled Pears
• No-Salt Hot Sesame Parsnips
• Sunshine Pickles
• And more!

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The era of the penicillin miracle is over. Through our indiscriminate use of pharmaceutical antibiotics in hospitals and factory farms, humans have created "Superbugs" — tenacious and virulent bacteria that develop resistance to solitary antibiotic compounds at an alarming speed.

In this empowering book, Stephen Buhner offers conclusive evidence that plant medicines, with their complex mix of multiple antibiotic compounds, are remarkably effective against drug-resistant bacteria. You'll learn how antibiotic herbs such as aloe, garlic, and grapefruit seed extract represent our best defense against bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, and Salmonella — and how their use will ensure that, in the future, antibiotic drugs will still be there when we really need them.

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In this new book, Ann Lovejoy exuberantly consolidates her gardening and cooking expertise into a year-round feast of fruits, vegetables and herbs, complete with color photographs. Her simple, uncluttered recipes emphasize bright flavors and a creativity centered on an abundance of fresh produce, from the familiar to the exotic.

Fresh from the Garden will appeal even to readers who don't have a vegetable garden or orchard in their backyard. Thanks to the ever-expanding farmers markets and popular community-supported agriculture programs in the Pacific Northwest, fresh, organic produce is always easy to come by.

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In his insightful new book, Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind, contrary farmer Gene Logsdon provides the inside story of manure — our greatest, yet most misunderstood, natural resource. He begins by lamenting a modern society that not only throws away both animal and human manure — worth billions of dollars in fertilizer value — but that spends a staggering amount of money to do so. This wastefulness makes even less sense as the supply of mined or chemically synthesized fertilizers dwindles and their cost skyrockets. In fact, he argues, if we do not learn how to turn our manures into fertilizer to keep food production in line with increasing population, our civilization, like so many that went before it, will inevitably decline.

With his trademark humor, his years of experience writing about both farming and waste management, and his uncanny eye for the small but important details, Logsdon artfully describes how to make fertilizer and humus by managing farm manure, pet manure and human manure.

About the author
Gene Logsdon farms in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. He is one of the clearest and most original voices of rural America. He has published more than two dozen books. He writes a popular blog at OrganicToBe.org, is a regular contributor to Farming Magazine and The Draft Horse Journal, and writes an award-winning weekly column in the Ohio Progressor Times.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books and products to readers. For more than 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.