The book is divided into two discrete yet complementary sections, one broadly aesthetic and the other more practical, although the practical interweaves with the aesthetic throughout.

In the first section, which spans five chapters, Hayward’s objective is to present the reader with useful and inspiring ideas for using stone in the garden. Lavish use of color photographs, diagrams, and plans helps illustrate the author’s pragmatic points in this section.

For those who have been inspired into action, the second section includes hands-on projects that are described step-by-step from design to completion. The chapters correspond to the order of topics in the first section and include a very generous number of helpful drawings and diagrams of the project under discussion.

The “inspirational” chapter on walls contains a plethora of practical advice interspersed with dreamy photos of stone walls that look like they date to medieval times. The author’s stated bias is for dry-laid walls, but he deals evenly with mortared walls too. A full-page chart on what to look for in stone walls and how to tell a good one from a bad one is almost worth the price of the book. The “practical” section on walls is even more down-to-earth, dealing with a variety of how-to’s—from soil types to plantings to where a load of stone should be dumped (uphill from where you need them).

Appendices contain color photographs of types of North American stone for different purposes, sources of stones, pool liners, and ornamental sculptures and benches. Also included is a small bibliography and a reasonably detailed index.

The only reservations I have about Stone in the Garden are that some photographs are out of focus and the insertion of several small pictures at various places on a page sometimes serves as more of a distraction than a help. Additionally, the text occasionally refers to a photograph that is located several chapters back or ahead, a cumbersome practice in a book of this size.

Despite its size and abundance of beautiful photographs, this is by no means a coffee table book. It is a manual for gardeners who might want to install a stone feature themselves. It is also for those who want to know the basics of constructing stonework before hiring someone else to build it. Finally, it is a book for anyone who slams on the brakes to admire a well-built stone wall.—Barbara Schlein

Horticulturist and writer Barbara Schlein operates Fountain Gardening Service in Woodbridge, Connecticut, which specializes in autumn and winter gardens.

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. Michael Pollan. Random House, New York, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $24.95. Buy this Book

A contributing writer to the New York Times magazine, Michael Pollan is also an observant, contemplative gardener. While planting potatoes, he notices bees pollinating the nearby apple tree and muses, rather conventionally, on how the bee and the apple have evolved together in a symbiotic relationship. But what of the gardener planting potatoes? What is his relationship to the potato? “Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potato make me do it?” he asks in a moment of inspiration.

In witty prose, Pollan lays out a subtle argument that plants entice us to help them reproduce by tying into some of our most basic desires. He explores this proposition by focusing on four plants—apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes—that are representative of our desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. These desires, he suggests, are woven into the very genes of selected plants, not through any direct human intervention, but because the plants have found us to be perfect allies in the evolutionary battle being waged against competing species.

Exploring many interesting byways and suggesting some paradigms for thinking about nature, Pollan argues that after 10,000 years of co-evolution, domesticated plants are rich archives of human nature and culture. For example, he sees our relationship to nature as a constant battle between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, the tension between a desire for wilderness and orderly rows of lettuce, between the uncontrolled diversity of the species and bio-engineered potatoes. What makes the book so valuable is that Pollan never opts for the simple answer, the standard argument. Instead, he presents a nuanced examination of the complex issues facing gardeners, farmers and consumers.

While The Botany of Desire opens new ways of thinking about nature, it keeps tripping over the notion of intention. How can plants entice us or use us if we don’t allow them to have intention? Pollan, of course, realizes that plants do not really scheme to win our attention any more than evolution has a grand plan. The problem seems to be simply a semantic one; we have no words to convey intention or desire without consciousness. The chapter on apples centers on the life of Johnny Appleseed, and Pollan sketches a very different life from the one most of us learned from children’s books. His discussion of tulips is perhaps the least interesting since it covers the same ground as Anna Pavord’s The Tulip. However his chapter on cannabis, while somewhat speculative, was particularly interesting. The history of the drug war and its influence on cannabis-growing is instructive without being a polemic. Similarly, his discussion of Monsanto’s NewLeaf potatoes strives to see both sides of the bio-engineering issue, and, as such, is a sober warning about the choices we face. The book will give you something interesting to think about as you whack away at your weeds. Are you acting as an independent agent or are you in the thrall of your tulips?—Norma Prendergast

An art historian and writer, Norma Prendergast gardens in Ithaca, New York.

The Cactus Family. Edward F. Anderson. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $99.95. Buy this Book


The real meat of this large, scholarly work is contained in its encyclopedic treatment of the 125 genera of cacti. This section describes the different genera and selected species within each genus and illustrates the major species with color photographs that include a nice mix of cultivated plants and plants in the wild. It is also a technical reference for nomenclature and botanic descriptions, as well as an excellent guide to refer to when looking up individual species.

Five chapters cover background information: ethnobotany, morphology, conservation, cultivation, and classification. As a professional grower of cacti and succulents, I found the chapter on cultivation—contributed by Roger Brown—to generally be both informative and practical. A beginning grower would do well to follow the advice relating to pots, potting media, and watering practices. However, I found the information relating to using fertilizers and how to re-pot cacti vague and incomplete. The section on control of diseases and insect pests was better but might cause inexperienced gardeners to be more concerned with these problems than they need to be.

Anderson began his study of cacti at the invitation of Lyman D. Benson, one of this century’s foremost authorities on the cacti of North America and author of the seminal The Cacti of the United States and Canada, published in 1983 by Stanford University Press. Anderson’s first botanic fellowship involved an ethnobotanical study of the peyote cactus, and his knowledge of and continued interest in ethnobotanical uses of cacti affords valuable insights. I found the chapter on human use of cacti throughout the Americas the most interesting one in the book.

While Benson’s book remains the classic text on cacti native north of the Mexican border, this new work provides comprehensive coverage of the cacti of Mexico and South America that I have not seen elsewhere. The photographs of some of the rarest and most sought-after species of Mexican and South American cacti in habitat are superb and will entice many avid collectors who view them.

The locations where cacti species and subspecies are found are consistently listed throughout, but I found information on the details of their habitats a little skimpy. The inclusion of more information about preferences for unusual soil types, the range of altitudes each species inhabits and other specialized habitat requirements would improve future editions. For those of us who live in regions that experience freezing winter temperatures, information on the altitudes where a species is found imparts invaluable clues to its cold hardiness.—David Salman

David Salman is proprietor of High Country Gardens, a mail-order nursery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He specializes in introducing hardy, drought-tolerant plants.

Gardener's Books


There are many more new books on the market than we have time or space to review, but here are a few that recently caught our eye. Through a partnership with amazon.com, AHS members can order these and other books at a discount by linking to amazon.com through Society's Web site at www.ahs.org.

The Gardener's Guide to Growing Maples. James G.S. Harris. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2000. 160 pages. Publisher's price, hardcover: $29.95. Buy this Book

Illustrated throughout with color photographs, this book offers a thorough overview of the genus Acer. The bulk of the book is composed of an A-to-Z encyclopedia of species and cultivars. There are also chapters on cultivation, propagation, and using maples in the garden.

Taylor's Guide to Bulbs Barbara W. Ellis. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Massachusetts, 2001. 438 pages. Publisher's price, softcover: $23. Buy this Book

The subtitle of this revised guide says it all: "How to Select and Grow More than 400 Summer-Hardy and Tender Bulbs." A gallery section includes color photographs of all the bulbs, and an encyclopedia section covers plant descriptions and information on how to care for bulbs.

Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden. Diane Ackerman. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2001. 272 pages. Publisher's price, softcover: $25. Buy this Book

The events of the passing seasons as they unfold in the author's garden are recorded in essays that read like the pages of a journal. Observations become stream-of-consciousness connections to myriad other topics, including poetry, literature, history, and scientific principles.

Magnolias: A Gardener's Guide. Jim Gardiner. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2000. 329 pages. Publisher's price, hardcover: $39.95. Buy this Book

Magnolia growers, particularly those living in cooler climates, will find this revised and expanded volume, originally published in 1989, a valuable reference. Gardiner offers detailed advice and information on cultivation, disease and pest control, propagation, and use of species and hybrids.

Muenscher's Keys to Woody Plants. Edward A. Cope. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2001. 337 pages. Publisher's price, hardcover: $50; softcover: $22.95. Buy this Book

Originally published in 1922 and last revised in 1950, the newest edition of Walter C. Muenscher's venerable reference work for northeastern America covers more than 300 genera and more than 1,000 species. The guide is divided into three sections: The first covers keys for identifying cultivated, naturalized, and native woody plants; the second is an abridged key covering only native and commonly naturalized woody plants; and the third is a key by species.

The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World. Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson, editors. North Point Press, New York, 2001. 288 pages. Publisher's price, hardcover: $24. Buy this Book

This anthology offers an eclectic mixture of previously published works by women writers - including Rachel Carson, Alice Walker, Diane Ackerman, Susan Orlean, Jane Goodall, and Jeanne Achterberg - that touches on some aspects of plants and the natural world. There is a mix of poetry, reminiscences, an historical account of women herbalists in medieval Europe, and even a biography of Nobel Prize-winning plant geneticist Barbara McClintock.

In the Company of Stone: The art of the Stone Wall. Dan Snow. Photographs by Peter Mauss. Artisan, New York, New York, 2001. 128 pages. Publisher's price, hardcover: $35; softcover: $22.50. Buy this Book

Relying on understanding the characteristics of each stone and the force of gravity - rather than mortar - to hold his works together, Snow, an experienced "waller" and artist, builds stone walls, terraces, and other architectural landscape features in the old way. He also offers his thoughts, practical and philosophical, on the art of working with stone. Includes quadratone and full-color photographs.