|
American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
March/April 2005 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 March/April 2005 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
Container Gardening
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 The
Essential Garden Design Workbook. Rosemary Alexander. Timber Press,
Portland, Oregon, 2004. 292 pages. Publisher’s price, softcover: $23.07.
Buy This Book
 The
Intimate Garden: Twenty Years and Four Seasons in Our Garden.
Gordon Hayward and Mary Hayward. W. W. Norton & Company, New York,
New York, 2005. 224 pages. Publisher’s price, softcover: $26.37.
Buy This Book
Most gardeners I know are simply incapable of thinking in abstractions.
For example, when I walk through my garden, I’m focused on the hydrangea
that needs pruning or the bedraggled rose that has burst into bloom
unexpectedly. Just like forests and trees, sometimes it’s hard to see
the garden for the plants.
In her new book, The Essential Garden Design Workbook,
noted British garden designer Rosemary Alexander promotes the notion
that a garden must be more than a collection of plants that one feels
passionate about. It must also be balanced and composed, like a great
painting. To achieve this, Alexander introduces readers to pivots and
focal points, the role of the overhead plane, the importance of depth,
and the various qualities of water.
If this all sounds pretty esoteric, it is. This is a
comprehensive, almost scholarly guide to the secrets of good garden
design. It would be particularly helpful to a serious gardener who is
getting ready to develop a large garden or improve an established
garden. And anyone who is hiring a garden designer or landscape
architect could use this book to follow along in the design process.
Gordon and Mary Hayward’s new book, The Intimate Garden,
takes a different approach to garden design. Here the reader gets a
personal story of the couple’s Vermont garden (Gordon is a well-known
garden designer and Mary honed her gardening skills in the English
Cotswolds), and a more direct connection to plants as—well, plants.
Detailed plant descriptions, almost 200 full color photographs, and
engaging stories help to describe the emergence of the garden as both an
organic and a carefully planned process.
On one hand, strong design is always a key consideration.
The Haywards describe a visit from a respected gardener who looked from
the front door of the house to an old apple tree in the distance and
said, “That’s an important line.” That single statement helped the
couple find the starting point for their plan. But quite apart from
design considerations, they also share a familiar joy in acquiring and
planting new plants. They describe a trip to a nursery, after which they
“planted our new treasures in a white heat, paying some attention to a
rough plan we had devised and a lot of attention to how the plants
looked as we placed them.”
Both books make excellent companions for anyone
undertaking a major design project. They also will make good reading for
anyone who would like to understand how to apply design concepts to
create a cohesive garden.
Amy Stewart
Amy Stewart is the author of The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable
Achievements of Earthworms.
 No
One Gardens Alone: A Life of Elizabeth Lawrence.Emily Herring
Wilson. Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2004. 334 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $17.16.
Buy This Book
In this well-written and carefully researched biography of a giant in
gardening literature, Emily Herring Wilson writes, “Elizabeth Lawrence
had an implicit understanding of how essential her life was to her work,
and she wrote from her experiences at home and in the garden.”
Lawrence’s gardening interests were wide ranging, but her life was
—outwardly, at least—circumscribed and quiet.
Though she attended Barnard College as a young woman and
studied landscape architecture at what is now North Carolina State
University, Lawrence never married, never held a job, and lived with her
mother in Raleigh and then Charlotte, North Carolina. However, she
corresponded voluminously with fellow gardeners across the
country—people who responded to her garden articles in the Charlotte
Observer and her books, such as A Southern Garden, The Little Bulbs, and
Gardens in Winter.
Rather than concentrate on the details of Lawrence’s
relatively uneventful life, the author recreates the milieu that
sustained Lawrence and enriched her writing. The book helps us
understand not only Elizabeth Lawrence, but a way of life. We learn of
the Raleigh society in which she grew up; we meet gardeners and friends,
famous and obscure, who formed the fabric of her life. The book explores
her friendship with fellow writers Eudora Welty and Katherine White as
well as with other avid gardeners across the nation.
If you are looking for an in-depth exploration of
Lawrence’s gardens, this is not the book for you, though the author is
clearly a knowledgeable gardener. However, if you would like to know
more about the society that produced Elizabeth Lawrence, I heartily
recommend this book. It brings to life a world that seems to have
disappeared, one where women’s lives were bound by family and social
convention, but one in which it was still possible to live a rich life,
nourished by a passion for gardening and the love of friends.
Norma Prendergast
Norma Prendergast is an art historian who gardens in rural Brooktondale,
New York.
MINI REVIEWS
 Gardening
has the power to profoundly affect people’s lives, as Debra Landwehr
Engle demonstrates in Grace From the Garden: Changing the World
One Garden at a Time (Rodale Press, 2003, 240 pages, hardcover,
$13.57).
Buy This Book The book explores gardens
that teach, nourish, unite, inspire, and heal people from all walks of
life. As Engle explains, many of them started with “a simple idea,
something anyone could do, and it grew into a project that altered
people’s lives.” Heartwarming and inspiring, this collection of stories
will introduce you to ordinary gardeners who literally plant seeds of
hope in America and around the globe.
 Lest
gardeners ever take themselves too seriously, Garden Lunacy: A
Growing Concern (AAB Book Publishing, LLC, 2004, hardcover, $22.91)
Buy This Book by Art Wolk will set
them straight! Through personal anecdotes and offbeat observations, Wolk—a
multi-talented garden writer and lecturer—takes a light-hearted look at
the sometimes-wacky world of gardening. He delves into the differences
between gardeners and non-gardeners, the competitiveness of flower
shows, dealing with garden pests, and more. “I probably have more
horticultural foibles and addictions than any gardener you’ve ever met,”
writes Wolk. “If you identify with any of my eccentricities, I hope
you’ll be able to laugh along with me.”
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor
GARDENER’S BOOKS
Container Gardening
For several years, containers offered my only means of gardening when I
lived in a city apartment, which, thankfully, had a large balcony.
However, because of the versatility of container gardening, I never felt
limited. I grew everything from giant sunflowers to winding wisteria and
even several good-sized century plants (Agave americana). Whether you’ve
got a balcony or a large property, container gardening offers nearly
limitless possibilities, as evidenced by the following selection of
books available on the subject.
 In
Gardens to Go: Creating and Designing a Container Garden (Bulfinch
Press, 2005, hardcover, $23.10)
Buy This Book, Sydney Eddison
writes, “Container gardens can be of any size or shape; they can cover
an entire rooftop or be squeezed onto a tiny patio. Assembling them is
fun and relatively quick, and anybody can do it.” Partnering with
photographer Steve Silk, Eddison shares their experiences and knowledge
of container gardening from the plants to the pots, as well as that of
six other prominent and passionate container gardeners. The book boasts
200 color photographs and includes helpful resources such as a list of
basic plants for containers, recommended books for further reading, and
sources for unusual annuals and tender perennials.
 Design
elements such as color, texture, proportion, and shape of both the
plants and containers are important to consider, as Paul Williams
emphasizes in Container Gardening: Creative Combinations for Real
Gardeners (DK Publishing, 2004, hardcover, $16.50).
Buy This Book
In these pages you will find plenty of ideas and
inspiration for your own creations. The book includes stunning portraits
of containers Williams himself has created and demonstrates the skillful
use of the design principles he covers. There is also a section that
explains the merits of various container materials, followed by some
basic how-to instructions and maintenance tips. Finally, Williams
provides a plant directory filled with his personal favorites and
easy-to-grow plants, each one accompanied by a color photograph.
 Flowerpots:
A Seasonal Guide to Planting, Designing, and Displaying Pots
(Trafalgar Square Publishing, 2004, hardcover, $19.77)
Buy This Book
by Jim Keeling looks at container gardening
throughout the year. The book begins with a chapter called “Autumn,” and
progresses through the other seasons, because, as Keeling writes, “my
year starts, as every schoolchild knows, after the summer vacation.”
Each season brings new possibilities and challenges, and the author
guides his readers through each one. A craftsman who makes flowerpots
from clay as well as a gardener who designs and plants his own
creations, Keeling writes lyrically yet informatively about both pottery
and gardening. Dazzling photographs further add to this lovely book.
 P.
Allen Smith’s Container Gardens: 60 Container Recipes to Accent Your
Garden (Clarkson Potter, 2005, hardcover, $20.37)
Buy This Book
takes a cookbooklike approach. “Just as in cooking, the
recipes are there as a formula for success and also as a framework to
encourage you to add your own special twist,” explains Smith. The
“courses” in this cookbook are spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and
each recipe lists “ingredients,” such as the type of container to use
and of course, the plants. Diagrams show how to arrange everything and
color photographs show the finished containers. The book also includes
sections on container gardening how-to and maintenance, and a plant
directory.
 For something along the lines of a more
straightforward manual, there’s Contain Yourself: 101 Fresh Ideas for
Fantastic Container Gardens (Ball Publishing, 2003, hardcover,
$16.47)
Buy This Book
by Kerstin P. Ouellet. The book is divided into
three parts: The first briefly covers designing, planting, and caring
for container gardens; the second part is devoted to plant profiles; and
the last part contains ideas for using the plants previously mentioned.
The arrangements Ouellet presents range from the simple and
sophisticated to the whimsical and wild. Color photographs, helpful
diagrams, and a conversational tone make this book both a pleasant read
and an informative resource.
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor
|
