There are many more edible flowers than the three species you sometimes find on a packaged salad in the supermarket. But since others are poisonous, you need a really good guidebook to get you started. And that guide is now here!⁠ ⁠ More than 100 flowers are presented with their flavor profiles, origins, and edible plant parts, accompanied by vivid photographic portraits. Simple recipes and short essays written by a number of famous chefs, artists, and writers tell the creative and gastronomic story of edible flowers, making this practical handbook an entertaining read. Buy

Depending on where you are in the world, you - like us - are probably just emerging from a gloomy winter time. Here in Berlin it’s particularly grim, but just this week we have felt the first rays of sunshine starting to peek through the clouds, bringing with it new green leaves, tiny flower buds: the first glimpses of spring. Instant happiness! What this tells us, and why we're telling you this, is that plants and nature have a tremendous emotional effect on us, even when we’re living the city life.
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When would be a better time to think about what beehives look like in other countries than while enjoying your Sunday roll with honey. Anyway, if you thought hives were these wooden boxes all over the world, you couldn't be more wrong. There are small houses with straw roofs, fully carved wooden soldiers with open mouths as entrances, vertical clay hives and baskets hanging in trees. And all this so that you can enjoy your bread with honey. And butter. Buy

If you are in anyway like us, having difficulties to keep even a basil alive on the windowsill, then this book comes just in time to create a small potted garden for this summer. Expert planting advice for growing fruit and vegetables in containers, whether it be a window box or a terracotta pot on a balcony, are accompanied by 50 delicious recipes. Aaron Bertelsen from the renowned English garden Great Dixter guides you through cultivation methods, the pots to be used, gives personal tips on choosing varieties and advice on cultivation and care. This book proves that lack of space is no obstacle to growing what you want to eat. And what could be better than harvesting and cooking home-grown food. Buy

The latest issue of The Plant accompanies Harley Weir on ceramics art therapy with her father, shows the democratic significance of a place like Central Park, travels with us to Rio de Janeiro, and talks with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Formafantasma about their - then soon to be opened -exhibition at Serpentine Galleries. Now Formafantasma's exhibition can only be seen online, the possibility to travel to Rio is just a vague memory, and Central Park has a makeshift hospital on its grounds. In short, it is an edition that comes from the world of yesterday. Which is less than two months away, and yet it seems like a lifetime. But that still does not make the issues irrelevant. Quite the opposite. With all the news and headlines revolving around Covid-19, the terrible scenes in hospitals, and the people trying to cope with quarantine, loneliness and unemployment, we should not forget that we are still in the middle of a climate crisis, that parks, nature and green spaces are important for our health, and that creative, meditative work with our hands, like pottery, has a good effect on our mental health. Let us look at the topics of yesterday, because more than ever they will be the topics of tomorrow.⁠ Buy

We all know these moments when we just have enough of breaking news that show us in what destructive times we live in or how we will all end up in disaster. In these moments we like to distract ourselves with something light, something beautiful, that lifts our spirit and draws a smile upon our faces - something like flowers. Well, that won’t work this time! At least not with the latest issue of The Plant. ⁠ ⁠ „Our house is on fire.“ said Greta Thunberg and thousands of pupils followed her on the streets. They fight for our biotope, for nature and all living beings. The Plant accompanied these kids to learn more about their thoughts. But while the young generation sees their future taken away from them, the „nature artist“ Herman De Vries finds soothing reassurance in the thought that humanity fades and nature returns. Photographs of plastic wrapped flowers, grown, cut, and then sold to bring for a short moment nature and life into our concrete homes, the artificial gardens of Disneyland, they add to the conversation a picture of how deranged our relationship to nature undoubtedly is. This issue is not about plants, it is not about flowers, it is about us living with nature. It is about our planet, about mother earth and how we treat her.⁠ ⁠ Well, and for the ones really needing some recreation time, there is also a conversation with Olivia Laing full of plant talk and dirty hands solely from gardening.⁠ Buy

When we think of flora, we often think of flowers. But it is trees that stand tall and majestic, that let us climb into their tops when we are children, that make us dream and listen to our stories. It is trees that provide us soothing shade in summer, paint our cities green and as woods are an endless inspiration for stories and folklore. "The Romance of the Trees" from Ernest Wilson from 1920 remembered John Tebbs, Editor in Chief, of his long hold strong connection with trees, which is deeply rooted in his childhood. The book inspired the fourth issue of Pleasure Garden, and so we find not just Ernest Wilson, but also Walt Whitman, the Redwood Trees, palmy leaves, woody fragrances, tree climbers and Mumbai treelife. Buy

The beauty and high-quality production of the seventh issue of Rakesprogress is a hint that this magazine is suited for the shelves of a zealous collector. Obviously it’s about plants and gardening, but also about other topics like photography, fashion and pottery. These are presented by paying equal attention to style and quality content. The pages have an earthy-urban feel to them adding to the expression of the photographs, flat-spread on the pages perfectly befitting their sturdy uncoated quality. Buy