hRare green blooms focus of book

hRare green blooms focus of book

We tend to think of leaves as green and flowers as anything but. Nevertheless, nature put a bit of green on the palette of flower colors, too.

Those rare blooms are the focus of “Green Flowers: Unexpected Beauty for the Garden, Container or Vase.”

Green flowers don’t wear the showy hues of their more brightly colored cousins because they don’t need to attract pollinators, author Alison Hoblyn explains. The book profiles more than 80 such plants, some with true flowers and others with flowerlike structures made of bracts or modified leaves.

The book is devoted almost entirely to descriptions of individual green-flowered plants, including information on caring for each and suggestions for using it in the landscape and in flower arrangements.

“Green Flowers” is published by Timber Press and sells for $24.95 in hardcover.

New magazine geared for do-it-yourselfers

Even though several home decorating magazines have folded in the past year, a new one, focusing on do-it-yourself projects, has popped up.

Fresh Home, whose second issue hit newsstands recently (following the inaugural issue in February), is geared toward a “whole new generation of 20- to 30-somethings who really want a nice home but want to put their own style on it,” says editor in chief Neil Wertheimer.

In the upcoming issue of the quarterly magazine, there are affordable shopping guides; projects, such as redecorating a bathroom for less than $500; and advice on creating a lush lawn without spending wads of cash and all weekend on it.