BHG Editors' Favorite Finds: Essentials for Staying Cool

If you’re new to gardening, you might be wondering where to start. To help you get to grips with the basics, we’ve created lots of helpful guides and tips on gardening for beginners.

Today we’re visiting Francis’s garden in Hartsdale, New York.

These Cool Looking Mushrooms can be a great addition to your garden, thanks to their striking colors and weird shapes. Explore the fascinating world of fungi!

Some of us are born with a green thumb, while some of us need a bit of help to keep our plant friends happy and healthy. So it's just as well there are so many products and gadgets available that make plant care easier. Here, we’ve rounded up 14 items both you and your plants will appreciate.

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Dorm shopping can be overwhelming. The lists of must-haves grow ever-longer, meaning you definitely “missed” something while moving into the college room—whether for yourself or a loved one. But whoever may be nesting in the small space, it’s now been a few weeks. You’ve gotten a feel for what you need to pick up versus what you don’t, and may be looking to fill in some gaps that make dorm living more comfortable, convenient, and stylish.

Not everyone has a backyard appropriate for a large garden, but almost everyone can keep a container plant. Size is only one of the many advantages of growing plants in containers rather than in the ground. This only works well, however, if you select plants that are happy living in a pot. Gardeners in the West have many choices. Read on for some top options for California or Nevada container gardening.

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On my birthday this year I sowed seeds for some cool chillies – chilli varieties developed for flavour, not heat. Due to the garden not being ready, I wasn’t able to plant them out until the end of June. They had a west-facing spot, with plenty of afternoon sun and the warmth of the house wall behind them. Mostly they thrived, and were trouble-free plants. I had to stake them, and water them when I watered the rest of the garden, but for the most plant they got on with life without me.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.

What kind of traveller are you? Do you prefer to lie in a hammock slung between two palm trees, reading the latest blockbuster novel? Or would I find you soaking up the local culture along with the sun? I’m more of the latter, and it helps to know a smattering of the local language if you go off the beaten track!

Continuing my research into which of NASA’s African American astronauts are space gardeners, I turned my attention to the second name on the (alphabetical) list: Guion Stewart Bluford Jr.