Category: Book Reviews

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants Book has Arrived! (with Video and a Contest!)

    Read to the end of the article to find out how you can win an autographed copy of Wicked Plants! Y’all know by now what a huge fan I am of Amy Stewart and her writing. As a plant geek, I love how accurate she is about the plants’ details (so many writers get basic…

  • Wicked Plants: The Movie

    Update 1/8/09 – Amy just posted more about the making of this movie over on Garden Rant. Check it out! Amy Stewart is one of my very favorite garden writers. I mean, who wouldn’t love someone who wrote a WHOLE BOOK about earthworms, and managed to make it good, too? Then Flower Confidential: all the…

  • Last-Minute Gifts for Gardeners

    I don’t know about you, but the actual getting-gifts-for-people part of Christmas kind of crept up on me, and I’m scurrying to find or make just the right thing for everyone I love. Gardeners can be hard to shop for, because so many people give us gifts that look pretty, but aren’t really that useful…