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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
November/December 2003
Recommended Garden Books
Because the AHS Horticultural Book
Service was discontinued as of June 30, 2000 no further phone or mail orders
are filled. However, AHS members are still be able to order books at a
discount by linking to Amazon.com through the Society's Web site. Through this
partnership with Amazon.com, AHS members can receive better discounts on most
titles, faster delivery, greater inventory, and improved access to
hard-to-find books. The books listed here have not been critically evaluated;
they have been chosen for description based on unusual subject matter or
substantive content.
The following
books are our current recommended garden books from the November/December 2003 issue
of The American Gardener. To
read the review just click on the book title. You can then order the book
directly from Amazon.com by clicking on "Buy this book!" that
follows each review.
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening
Library
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 A
Gardener’s Guide to Frost: Outwit the Weather and Extend the Spring and Fall
Seasons. Philip Harnden. Willow Creek Press, Minocqua, Wisconsin. 128
pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $19.60.
Buy This Book
What is frost? Isn’t it just that white stuff covering my garden plants on a
crisp fall morning? Isn’t frost a little like the robin—except that it’s not
the harbinger of spring but of autumn, the end of the growing season? Well,
not exactly, explains author Philip Harnden in his new book, A Gardener’s
Guide to Frost. Harnden clarifies “that frost means freezing; the sudden onset
of temporary freezing temperatures that injure plants during the gardening
season.” He further adds that depending on where you live, frost can injure
plants during spring, summer, and fall.
The author, who specializes in
cold-climate gardening, has founded a newsletter for northern gardeners, a
north-country gardening school, and a nonprofit organization that shares
harvests with the hungry. He draws on this specialized experience to analyze
and explain a phenomenon that many of us take for granted—frost and freezing.
We all know it happens, but now we can learn why it happens—and, to some
extent, how to avoid or mitigate its negative effects on our plants.
The first half of the six-chapter book demystifies topics such as chill
injury, radiation and advection frost, frost-free dates, microclimates,
humidity and dew point, and latent heat. In the second half of the book, the
author provides us with tools for forecasting frost, fending off frost, and
extending the growing season beyond frost. In these chapters, he explores the
effectiveness of row covers, “Wall o’ Water” tepees, glass cloches, and
aquadomes, as well as inexpensive materials for constructing cold frames.
Finally, the author reminds us to “embrace frost” and learn to work with it
rather than fear it.
A Gardener’s Guide to Frost is a
deceptive little book. This petite, picturesque tome looks like any ordinary
coffee table book filled with stunning pictures of glistening droplets of dew,
intricate ice crystals, and thick, foggy mornings, but it is also filled with
extraordinary scientific detail. In addition to spectacular photography, there
are enough meticulous charts, maps, and diagrams to make this plant scientist
giddy with excitement.
—Barbara S. Arter
A science editor and writer,
Barbara S. Arter also teaches biology and botany at the University of Maine at
Augusta.
 The
Natural History of a Garden. Colin Spedding with Geoffrey Spedding.Timber
Press, Portland, Oregon, 2003. 235 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $6.24.
Buy This Book
No words are wasted in this book by Sir Colin Spedding, former professor of
agricultural systems at the University of Reading, England. The author has
information to impart and curiosity to stimulate, and he goes right to work,
effectively accomplishing these goals with a crisp writing style and generous
use of sidebars.
Spedding urges readers to begin
viewing their gardens as more than pleasing environments. Rather, he would
like them to examine these areas with the eyes of a naturalist, noticing the
more seasonal “behaviors” of the plants, and the movements and lifecycles of
the animals—big and small—whose presence impacts the garden setting. Think
like a child, he coaxes, and view the time you spend in the garden as “a
voyage of discovery,” observing the activities of insects, the seed dispersal
techniques of plants, the behaviors of birds, the signs of mammals. He
promises that these observational skills, once acquired, will be pleasantly
habit-forming.
Spedding’s son, Geoffrey, an
associate professor in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department at
the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, assisted his father in
addressing the parallels and differences between American and English natural
history. A section of the first chapter clarifies these issues and
sufficiently puts to rest any thought that the book may not apply to the
American garden. Nature and ecology being what they are, the life processes of
plants and animals are similar enough that the information presented by
Spedding is applicable to us.
The author’s material is presented in
a “neighborly” tone—that of one friend encouraging another to expand his
world. Almost every page holds a sidebar with more detailed information on the
topics addressed within the narrative. Avid gardeners, whose shelves most
likely sagging with “how-to” books, should find The Natural History of a
Garden a refreshing approach to gardening. Spedding’s work may be seen as a
“what? where? when? how? and why?” addition to the garden library.
—Kathryn Lund
Johnson
Free-lance writer and photographer
Kathryn Lund Johnson is a frequent contributor to The American Gardener. She
lives near Middleville, Michigan.
 The
Secrets of Wildflowers: A Delightful Feast of Little-Known Facts, Folklore,
and History. Jack Sanders. The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2003.
304 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $17.47.
Buy This Book
In our household, we read at meals, and this book contributed to many pleasant
breakfasts. Almost every morning for more than three months, I read one
chapter as I munched my toast. Each covers a flower or small group of closely
related flowers. Jack Sanders has compiled a mass of facts, legends, and
history—somewhere between fact and legend—and written them up charmingly. His
book is neither pedantic nor dry, yet you will learn a great deal reading it.
The Secrets of Wildflowers covers not
only North American native wildflowers, but many introduced aliens as well. I
applaud this. It’s fine to be a purist, but the alien wildflowers are here to
stay—we may as well learn about and enjoy them.
The sidebars are fascinating as well; they include recipes, poetry,
quotations, and bizarre little facts. The bibliography and index are
excellent. My only complaints are that the type size is much too small, and
the shadowy drawings here and there behind the print, though charming, make it
reading difficult in spots. Don’t let these minor problems stop you from
buying the book, though.
Whether you grow wildflowers in your
garden or just enjoy them in the wild, you’ll find this book fascinating.
Indeed, you need not even particularly like plants. A friend who came to
supper last night, who is primarily interested in truck mechanics, leafed
through The Secrets of Wildflowers as I finished cooking. I looked up to find
him deeply immersed in the chapter on garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata).
“Good book,” he said at last as he came up for air.
—Nancy McDonald
Free-lance writer Nancy McDonald
grows wildflowers in her extensive gardens in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula.
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