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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
May/June 2004 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 May/June 2004 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
GARDENER’S BOOKS
Books of Regional Interest
The American gardening experience is borne from vastly diverse growing
environments and climates, so it is no wonder that our shelf of new
garden books is overflowing with those of regional interest. These
regional garden how-to and plant guides offer custom information on
everything from organic gardening practices to regional native plants.
The South and Southeast
The West
The Northwest
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
Restoring American Gardens: An
Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants 1640–1940. Denise Wiles
Adams. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2004. 419 pages. Publisher’s price,
hardcover: $39.95.
Buy This Book
I’ve always been amazed at how much time and money people spend on meticulous
restoration of historic homes and gardens, only to go out and buy their plants
and landscaping materials at the local home improvement store. In effect, this
results in a loss of the historic character they sought to preserve.
Fortunately, with the publication of Restoring American Gardens, the task of
finding appropriate plants for period homes has been simplified.
Through a systematic analysis of more than 300 garden
catalogs drawn from all regions of the United States, Denise Adams has
created an encyclopedia of the 1,000 most common heirloom trees, shrubs,
annuals, perennials, and bulbs available to gardeners from the mid-17th
to early 20th century. Each plant is described with historically
pertinent details, such as horticultural introduction dates, as well as
notes from many significant historic figures in American horticulture.
Adams has supplemented the text with useful
appendices, including cross-indexed listings of plants defined by region
and period of use, current source information for their purchase, and a
record of less tame historically popular garden ornamentals, like
Lonicera japonica and Paulownia tomentosa, that have escaped into the
wild. Ample use of period illustrations and early photographs adds to
the book’s richness.
One limitation of the book, as the author fully
acknowledges, is that the 300 catalogs she referenced represent only a
small fraction of the thousands published during the period covered and
draws most heavily on early 20th century catalogs. This restricts the
book’s usefulness for restoration of a Colonial-period landscape, but it
is certainly a good resource for post-Civil War period gardens.
Gardeners with an interest in heirloom plants or American garden history
will find much to like in this book. It will occupy a central place on
my landscape preservation bookshelf.
Charles Hulse
Charles Hulse is a professor of anthropology and directs the
Historic Preservation Program at Shepherd College in Shepherdstown,
West Virginia
The Earth Moved:
On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms.
Amy Stewart. Algonquin Books. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2004. 223 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $23.95.
Buy This Book
Amy Stewart shares my fascination with the little things in life—such as
fungi, nematodes, bacteria, and…earthworms. In The Earth Moved: On th
Remarkable Achievement of Earthworms, Stewart lets us in on the mysteries of
earthworms and their subterranean world. The details are not always for the
faint-of-stomach. Bacteria thrive and reproduce inside the body of a
nightcrawler, relates Stewart, “until far more bacteria emerge from the end of
a worm than entered in the first place.” And, during mating, earthworms
“excrete a great deal of sticky fluid that keeps them anchored together.” By
skillfully weaving together interesting earthworm factoids with personal
anecdotes, Stewart has created a delightfully entertaining book.
No book about earthworms is complete
without a discussion of their vital contribution to soil health. The owner of
a worm compost bin, Stewart is able to relate first-hand knowledge on the
subject of their nutrient-rich waste, or “castings,” which increase soil
fertility. In addition, worm burrows aerate soil and increase its
water-holding capacity.
But all is not rosy in earthworm
world. Stewart points out that most of the worms in North America are
non-native, introduced years ago by immigrants and in imported goods, and that
the threat of new introductions is ever present. In Minnesota, research by
forest ecologists indicates that bait worms inadvertently dumped by fishermen
can contribute to an alteration of understory plants in hardwood forests.
If, after reading this book, you discover a new-found respect for these
remarkable critters, you’re in good company. Stewart relates that Charles
Darwin, who performed intricate experiments with earthworms and devoted his
last book to them, became convinced that they had the ability to make
decisions.
The Earth Moved is part humorous,
part serious, and 100 percent informative. It is a must-read for gardeners who
want to learn to appreciate earthworms and their contribution to soil ecology.
Kathryn Lund Johnson
A frequent contributor to The American Gardener, Kathryn Lund Johnson is a
freelance writer based near Middleville, Michigan.
Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens.
Wayne Winterrowd. Random House Publishing. New York, New York, 2004. 498
pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $60.
Buy This Book
Over the past 10 years, I have grown many unusual annuals and tender
perennials at my small greenhouse in southern Vermont. Each year, in search of
new and exciting plants for my customers, I scour specialty seed and plant
catalogs, aided by notoriously inaccurate catalog descriptions and a stack of
well-shuffled books. If only Wayne Winterrowd’s Annuals and Tender Plants for
North American Gardens had been available earlier! This wonderful,
comprehensive reference would have made my research so much easier. It smartly
combines, under one cover, information on more than 600 species and 250 genera
of “true” annuals as well as the tender perennials, biennials, and shrubs that
many of us now grow as annuals.
More than 250 color photographs highlight the plant descriptions, which are
organized alphabetically by genus. Each genus entry gives a short profile of
the plant’s overall features and requirements, followed by detailed
information about species and cultivars, including habit, propagation,
culture, uses, native habitat, folklore, and ease of cultivation.
In sharing his experience—gleaned
over the years at North Hill, the spectacular garden Winterrowd and his
partner Joe Eck created in Readsboro, Vermont—Winterrowd manages to convey
practical advice and personal observations in equally eloquent terms.
“California poppies,” he says, “seem to have some sort of internal wisdom that
tells them when to pack up and be off, whatever intentions the gardener may
have for them.” In discussing Salpiglossis, he notes that it has “a tendency
to be a draggled mess in wet weather.”
The only shortcoming of this book is
that it contains images of just over half of the species covered in the text.
By adding a few more plant photographs, the publishers would have provided a
fitting complement to Winterrowd’s lyrical prose and further enhanced what is
already an excellent garden reference.
Carrie Chalmers
Carrie Chalmers owns Quoyburray Farm, a small greenhouse and market garden
business located in southern Vermont. She also works with her brother, Cameron
Chalmers, designing and planting gardens.
GARDENER’S
BOOKS
Books of Regional Interest
The American gardening experience is borne from vastly diverse growing
environments and climates, so it is no wonder that our shelf of new garden
books is overflowing with those of regional interest. These regional garden
how-to and plant guides offer custom information on everything from organic
gardening practices to regional native plants.
The South and
Southeast
In Garden Perennials for the
Coastal South, Barbara J. Sullivan (University of North Carolina Press,
2003. Hardcover $35.00, softcover $19.95) has assembled a fundamental volume
for gardeners in that hot and humid stretch from the Gulf Coast of Texas to
Tidewater Virginia. This attractive and authoritative guide covers everything
from companion plantings to “fail-safe” perennials. This beautiful book has
over 200 color photos and provides brief descriptions of more than 1,000
plants for the coastal south. Its only weakness is an often unsystematic text
organization—a glitch that is smoothed by a well-organized index.
Buy This Book
 Felder Rushing
takes a low-care, no-care approach to gardening in Tough Plants for
Southern Gardens (Cool Springs Press, 2003, $24.99). Each chapter, from
“Annuals that Endure” to “Vines with Vigor,” covers the garden basics leavened
with bits of garden wisdom that exemplify Rushing’s campy, down-to-earth
style. The book covers more than 120 annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs
suited to southern climates; each plant listing includes cultural information
and personal anecdotes designed to help gardeners create a lovely garden—and
have enough spare time to sip mint juleps on the porch swing.
Buy This Book
 Overwhelmed by all the
native ornamentals now available? Now at least Floridians have some help. Gil
Nelson’s Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants (University of Florida
Press, 2003, $34.95) covers 200 readily available native species and presents
enough solid information to help the reader choose the best plants for their
needs. Each plant is detailed by a full-page color illustration and photos
depicting flower form, plant habit and landscape use along with tabular data
on both growing conditions and landscape uses.
Buy This Book
 Howard Garrett, the
Dirt Doctor of Dallas, Texas, shows that good-ole-boy spirit in his new book,
Texas Gardening the Natural Way (University of Texas Press, 2004
$34.95). Whimsical cowboy cover aside, this is a seriously informative book
that not only makes a great case for organic methods, but puts them together
with first-rate, how-to graphics and an encyclopedic plant catalog that covers
the full gamut from trees to tomatoes, plus all the basics on fertility
management, pest control, lawns—you name it.
Buy This Book
The West
 Concise,
straight-forward, and thorough were all words that came to mind when I first
opened Native Plants for High Elevation Western Gardens by Janice Busco
and Nancy R. Morin (Fulcrum Publishing, 2003, $29.95). Descriptions and
cultural information are given for 150 attractive, low-maintenance native
plant species, each illustrated with a color photograph. The book’s perfect
balance of horticultural and botanical information make it a must-have volume
for any native plant enthusiast who lives in the high-altitude regions of the
American West.
Buy This Book
The Northwest
 Ann Lovejoy’s
Handbook of Northwest Gardening (Sasquatch Books, 2004, 27.95) is the
perfect primer for Pacific Northwest gardeners who desire beautiful, natural,
and self-sustaining garden landscapes. Well organized and easy to follow, the
book focuses on the rudiments of a good sustainable garden. Chapter headings
such as “Sustainable Garden Design,” “Delicious Dirt,” “The Role of Editing,”
and “Garden Bones” affirm that good planning and preparation are key to
achieving sustainable success. In fact, it is not until chapter nine that
Lovejoy begins six chapters dedicated to plant selection. This is a useful
resource for gardeners of all levels of experience.
Buy This Book
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