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Five Books: Essential Reads for Gardeners
I recently found the website Five Books: The Best Five Books on Everything, where they ask experts to name the five books in their field that everyone should read. (EDIT Jan 20: Looks like FiveBooks.com just got purchased by TheBrowser.com, but there are still links to the Five Books articles up.) I love to read.…
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Book Review of Plant-Driven Design by Lauren and Scott Ogden
In landscape design, there seems to be a constant gentle friction between gardeners who see a landscape as a setting for plants to shine, and people who come from a more architectural standpoint and see the plants themselves as secondary to the design aims. You can tell from the title, Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens That…
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Book Review of Japanese Maples by Vertrees and Gregory
Book Review of Japanese Maples: The Complete Guide to Selection and Cultivation, by J.D. Vertrees and Peter Gregory, Fourth Edition, Timber Press As a landscape designer, a critical part of my work is in recognizing the subtle differences between plants and what they do, so that I can play off the most unique attributes and…
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Book Review of Lavender: The Grower’s Guide by Virginia McNaughton
Lavender: The Grower’s Guide is a thorough and easy-to-use encyclopedia of the lavender varieties most common in production today. Virginia McNaughton begins the book strongly by discussing how to grow lavender, how to prune it, the special requirements of lavenders, which ones grow well in containers, and the pests and diseases that can strike lavender…
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The Little-Known Favorites of a True Gardener: Books From an Estate Sale
This morning I took my mom to an estate sale I saw advertised locally. (An estate sale, for those of you not familiar with the lingo, is a sale of someone’s possessions after they’ve died.) I find them heartbreaking and fascinating and delightful all at once. We put so much of our hopes and dreams…
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Review of The Nonstop Garden by Stephanie Cohen and Jennifer Benner
Is the word “garden” a noun or a verb? If much of the joy you take in your garden is that you get to play, experiment, fiddle, and tend to it, then this is the book for you. Stephanie Cohen has put together a thoughtful design primer for gardeners who love to garden, and want…
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Book Review: The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden by Valerie Easton
You’d think that a landscape designer who also does landscape maintenance would be dismissive of the whole low-maintenance gardening thing. After all, there’s a negative impression of low-maintenance gardens as being dull, static, lifeless places devoid of wildlife or any personal character. But there is a balance in a well-designed garden between hardscape (the patios,…
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Heather and Heath Fans: Free E-Books from the Heather Society!
Besides the Timber Press book Gardening with Hardy Heathers by Wulff and Small, my favorite heather resources have been two slender booklets published by the International Heather Society and given to me by our local Heather guru Maria Krenek. The books are about how to care for and grow heathers successfully, and which heathers they…
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Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants Talk at Arcata’s Northtown Books
I had a blast recently seeing Amy Stewart speak in person at our local bookstore about her book, Wicked Plants. I’d seen her previously at our local garden show, but this was even cooler because the bookstore owner provided some wicked drinks for us all – gin and tonics using a fancy tonic water with…
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Wicked Plants Book Review (Video with Amy Stewart) Plus a Look Inside the Author’s Wicked Plants Garden
I’m a huge fan of Amy Stewart, and I’ve read everything she’s written, including her bimonthly column in our local newspaper and her writing at Garden Rant, so I was thrilled when I heard about her latest book, Wicked Plants. I’m a professional gardener and a total plant geek, so reading all about the wicked…
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The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart: Video Book Review
OK, so this isn’t strictly gardening, but all ya’ll should know by now what a rabid fan of Amy Stewart I am. I love her writing on Garden Rant, I love Wicked Plants and the rest of her non-fiction books, and I love her chicken paintings. So when I heard she had released her new…