Passionate Gardening: Good Advice for Challenging Climates. Lauren Springer and Rob Proctor. Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado, 2000. 336 pages. 93/4" x 93/4". Publisher's price, hard cover: $34.95. Our price $27.96. Buy this Book

Some people garden involuntarily. Beyond breathing, eating, and sleeping, their lives depend on turning the soil and coaxing seeds to sprout, on finding the perfect plants for difficult places. Lauren Springer and Rob Proctor are such gardeners, and their latest team effort, Passionate Gardening, is a compilation of essays that individually inform, inspire, and entertain, and together blend and contrast two very different gardening styles. Both voice strong feelings and use words the same way they cultivate plants, with skill and pleasure. Springer praises clay soil as having a "cold but careful heart," and Proctor scorns "hybrid rose ghettos" as requiring "more chemicals than a heavy metal rock tour." A Springer motto, "There is no such thing as a bad plant, just bad planting," should hang above every potting bench.

Passionate Gardening is arranged into sections from the obvious: "Design and Inspiration" and "Through the Seasons" to the eclectic: "Common Ground," "Challenges," and "Perspectives." In theory, you can let the book fall open and read a single essay, but the style, the ideas, and the illustrations are so engaging you'll have perused a dozen essays before you remember you really should be out weeding. Can you help but love a gardening book that begins with "The Killing Fields"-an ode to all the failures that finally yield success?

Nearly half the book eases and propels us through the seasons. Spring unfolds as the time of extremes, high and lows both in temperature and temperament. We can share the frustration of too much to do to enjoy the effort, and too much satisfaction gained to ever consider stopping, a perverse Zen experience that will resonate with other passionate gardeners. Springer offers suggestions on exceptional varieties of irises, lilacs, crabapples, and penstemons, while Proctor contemplates the virtues of good timing, and cautions against abusing the shrubbery. "If nature had intended her junipers to look like poodles," he writes, "she'd have given them a different kind of bark."

The summer essays feature planting for hummingbirds and night fragrance, and insights about the twin concerns of every western gardener: water and sun. You'll have to read the book yourself to find out what summer gardening has to do with Picasso and the Queen of England's legs.

Fall's essays are ripe with bulb planting, leaves turning, and Proctor's "Winding Down." He describes autumn as a "horticulturally sober" time when a gardener gains the perspective to recognize and correct any misplaced ideas born of spring's frenzy that got out of hand in the heat of summer. To celebrate winter, they give us good excuses to retreat from the labors of the garden, to read, and to explore catalogs that will guarantee aching muscles come the thaw.

Proctor and Springer are living proof that the spirit driving the wheelbarrow makes a garden far more than the sum of its plants. Hundreds of plants are noted, some in detail, others with enough context to help sort out their potential in gardens well outside Colorado. The subtitle "Good Advice for Challenging Climates" is as much about attitude as it is about altitude. Whether or not their favorites will grow in your garden, Springer and Proctor's love of plants and the enticing images of their gardens make Passionate Gardening an innocent pleasure to peruse.

Judith Phillips is a writer, xeric plant grower, and garden designer with a passion for the high desert of New Mexico.

Some of our best garden writing comes from those who are academically trained in other fields but who are enthusiastically self taught in horticulture. Two shining examples are Allen Lacy and Roger Swain. Kieran Egan also fits this mold. He has doctorates in education from Cornell and Stanford and has published 16 academic books.

Building My Zen Garden is about Egan's experiences building a Zen-style garden in his western Canada neighborhood. Early on the author protests that while he grows a few vegetables, his wife is the real gardener in the family. There are hints throughout the book, however, that gardening has captured another academic victim. Once the pond, waterfalls, and bog have been completed and friends suggest he "must enjoy sitting here watching the goldfish among the floating plants, with the sound of the water running among the stones of the stream," Egan responds that "the pleasure mainly comes through others' pleasure. To have made something that seems to delight friends and relations is a delight. But when I sit here by myself, I see mainly what needs to be done, or what needs correcting." How like an experienced gardener!

Egan also states that the Zen "thing" did not quite cut through his Irishness and personal assimilation into western culture. However, he writes, "what does give unalloyed pleasure is to see insects and birds, and the fish, taking this construction as part of the natural world. I get much pleasure, even joy, from the squirrel that runs along the roof of the fence, the dragonfly resting on a water lily leaf, or birds having an energetic bath in a shallow pool they have found or made in the bog." Zen or not, something got to him, and I am glad he has chosen to share it.

Perhaps what is most appealing is Egan's self-effacing humor and honesty when sharing the trials of an untrained builder, including the strains, sprains, blood, and bruises. He is such a totally likeable author and writes so well that even though I have no desire to build a Zen-style garden, I was immediately drawn into his world through to the end of the book.

As with other project books, the author must ask at the end whether it was worth it. Egan's honest answer is "maybe." In the last chapter he writes, "I was going to say that I would finish and then there would be just routine pottering, that there comes an indefinite and indistinct time when one moves from making to maintaining. But there is no finishing point because there is always something to add or change to take the garden closer to the foolish heart's desire. It is only our stories that have beginnings and endings. Nature doesn't recognize our starts and finishes."

Gardening and some Zen philosophy have captured him. Readers are better off because Egan has chosen to share his experience and provide us with knowledge, wisdom, and some vicarious pleasure. My copy of his book is now on loan to another gardener.

A horticultural extension specialist at North Carolina State University, Richard E. Bir is the author of Growing and Propagating Showy Native Woody Plants.

The Gardener's Guide To Temperate Bamboos. Michael Bell. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2000. 160 pages. 71/2" x 93/4". Publisher's price, hard cover: $29.95. Our Price $23.96.  Buy this Book

It is impossible to think of China, Japan, and most of the rest of Asia without bamboo-it is an integral part of life there. Bamboo is used in all manner of building, from construction of a house to furnishing its interior with mats, baskets, walls, and furniture. The foliage is used as forage and the shoots are included in almost all Asian cuisines. With this high profile interest in Asia, it is really rather shocking that bamboos are not only held in relatively low esteem in the rest of the world, but that as ornamental plants they have been the subject of bad press and determined hostility.

Now we have a modest book for the home gardener with a positive attitude and a wealth of facts. Temperate Bamboos by Michael Bell, the latest volume of the Gardener's Guide series published by Timber Press, fills many gaps in general bamboo perception and specific information about these varied plants.

Bell's budding interest in bamboos was strongly influenced by A.H. Lawson's Bamboos: A Gardener's Guide to their Cultivation in Temperate Climates, published in 1968. Noting that Lawson's book "is sadly out of print, very difficult to obtain, and, naturally, in great need of revision," Bell says his goal was to emulate Lawson's emphasis on practical experience and advice for growing bamboos, while at the same time updating the nomenclature and research on the subject.

This is actually two books in one: The first half is an excellent introduction to the scientific and horticultural nature of bamboos, while the second half is an alphabtica guide to genera, species, and cultivars suited to the garden.

Bamboo botany is clearly presented and easy to understand, thanks to excellent line drawings. Excellent photographs, mostly by Marie O'Hara and Karl Adamson, are not only beautiful, they often show key characters of anatomy and structure. After all, it is important for bamboo growers to know the how and why of clumping versus running species and the peculiar natures of these giant grasses in order to grow them properly.

Inevitably Bell addresses the subject of how to prevent or control the spread of overly rambunctious "running" bamboos-those that colonize rapidly with the aid of underground rhizomes. Some running bamboos can be invasive-although many problem plantings can be attributed to inattentiveness on the gardener's part-and knowing the potential difficulties prior to planting is the best way to avoid such unfortunate results.

The alphabetic guide covers almost all the readily available bamboos, as well as a few rare and desirable selections. For each a description, history, and suggested uses are provided, as well as hints to aid identification. Bamboos are difficult to identify and their taxonomy is very confused. Gardeners will find old friends like yellow-groove bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) and the dwarf Sasa and Pleioblastus ground covers, as well as new beauties such as Chimonobambusa tumidissinoda and a variety of South American Chusquea species.

Some reservations must be noted: This book is British, not just in spelling, but in its lack of any real discussion of hardiness, cold tolerance, or winter care. Many of the bamboos included here will thrive in the mild climate of southern England, but face a harsher reality in the continental United States. A few species are essentially tropical and a number require USDA Zones 9 and warmer or the cool maritime climate of our northwestern states.

Despite this gap in hardiness information, the basic and substantial coverage of these intriguing woody grasses makes this volume the best modern introduction to the subject now available. One can only hope that its positive approach will assist gardeners in making practical decisions as they venture into the fascinating world of bamboos. m

James Waddick, past editor of "Anything But Green," a newsletter on variegated plants, has grown nearly 200 hardy bamboos in his Kansas City, Missouri garden.

Gardener's Gift Books

You are sure to find some thoughtful gifts for gardeners among the following titles. 

AHS Practical Guides:

Walls and fences can be both practical and decorative as this concise, well-illustrated volume from the AHS Practical Guide series demonstrates. Styles, materials, and construction are discussed, as are planting schemes for the areas near walls and fences. Whether you are interested in designing a rustic picket fence or building a drystone wall, this book will provide both instruction and inspiration.

This revised and expanded edition of a book originally published in 1992 covers greenhouse gardening from the design and construction of the facility and managing its climate to selecting, propagating, scheduling, and growing the plants. Extensive coverage is given to management of pests and diseases. Practical appendices such as Helpful Associations and Organizations, Mail Order Supplies, and Record Keeping are included. More than 250 black and white drawings, photographs, and charts help illustrate the text.

This book is a compilation of stories of many historic American trees, with each chapter focusing on a particular tree or group of trees, including the "wild apples" celebrated by Henry David Thoreau, the Charter Oak of Connecticut-which played a role in the American Revolution, and the Japanese cherries that have become the official tree of our nation's capital. Each story represents part of our national and natural history, and will add to the reader's appreciation of both.

Written in a lively, informative style, this book is punctuated with humor and history. Beginning with an explanation about what makes a cottage garden and how the style evolved, the author addresses different climatic regions, soils, and plant types including annual, biennial, and perennial flowers; bulbs; herbs and vegetables. Descriptions, colorful photos, growing tips, and names of recommended varieties accompany each plant listing.

These plants, both common and obscure, are among those that the author has grown over the years. Lively and opinionated as ever, Lloyd discusses the habit of each plant and, from personal experience, garden situations in which they thrive. He also addresses their short-comings and their susceptibility to pests and disease. Color photographs provide ideas for combining different plants in a garden for spectacular effect.

Beginning with the basics of how plants grow, Morris moves right into topics such as starting plants from seed, weeding, watering, and composting. Lots of illustrations make explanations easy for children to follow. Clever, engaging projects such as "planting" a scarecrow, building a bean teepee, and planting an old pair of shoes with flowers will have kids reaping the rewards of their efforts as they learn the fundamentals-and the fun-of gardening.