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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
July/August 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 July/August 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
Regional Gardening Books
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 Plant:
the Ultimate Visual Reference to Plants and Flowers of the World
Editor-in-Chief Janet Marinelli. DK Publishing, Inc., in association
with Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York, New York, 2005. 512 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $50.
Buy This Book
A unique reference on the diversity and conservation of plants from a
gardener’s perspective, Plant is an endless goldmine of information for
responsible gardeners, science educators, and plant scientists.
Befitting of DK Publishing’s reputation for combining comprehensive
information and superb design, this book excels with the editorial
guidance of the internationally respected ecological and horticultural
visionary, Janet Marinelli.
Director of publishing at Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a
leader in urban restoration ecology, Marinelli encourages gardeners to
embrace ecological garden design and plant conservation because, “As
wilderness shrinks and garden acreage increases, gardeners play an
increasingly critical ecological role.” Marinelli warns that if current
trends continue, two-thirds of all plant species are likely to disappear
by the end of the 21st century as part of a modern mass extinction
episode “that could rival anything in evolutionary history, including
the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.”
Plant begins as a primer on the origins of plant
diversity on Earth, plant classification, how plants are necessary for
our survival, and provides captivating examples of local and global
actions to preserve plant species in the wild and in our own gardens.
The second section surveys the major global habitats and how each
relates to the home garden or conservatory. The third section describes
over 2,000 imperiled plants and their rarity, classification,
distribution, habitat, and cultivation requirements. Each page explodes
with color images that illustrate fascinating details about propagation
tips, plant-wildlife inter-relationships, ethnobotany, mythology,
history, and more.
Marinelli, a leader in invasive species management,
devotes the fifth section to an exceptionally useful encyclopedia of
invasive plants. This section should be required reading for all
gardeners, horticulturists, landscape architects, and botanists as
invasive plants, many of which are widely available for landscaping, are
exposed for what they are. The appendices provide an extensive directory
of information sources and experts, maps showing the Earth’s
biodiversity hotspots, and summaries of current plant conservation
regulations and strategies. Finally, readers will appreciate the
extensive glossary and index listing common and scientific names and
subjects.
Plant is endorsed by Botanic Gardens Conservation
International and the World Wildlife Fund, and owes its impeccable
detail to Marinelli’s collaboration with the world’s most renowned
botanical institutions and conservation organizations. This book is a
fascinating conservation encyclopedia combined with the real-life
experiences of gardeners and conservationists, and without a doubt, will
find a spot close at hand as one of my most useful references.
Anita A. Tiller
A botanist at Mercer Arboretum and Botanic Gardens in Humble, Texas,
Anita A. Tiller coordinates plant conservation efforts in east Texas and
the Upper Gulf Coast for the Center for Plant Conservation.
E legant
Silvers: Striking Plants for Every Garden
Jo Ann Gardener and Karen Bussolini. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon,
2005. 311 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $34.95.
Buy This Book
Silver foliage is the great unifier, linking and harmonizing pastel
colors to create soothing planting combinations and softening bolder
shades so they can co-exist companionably in the same border. Of course,
silver also has its own unique beauty; it hardly needs its neighbors to
make it special. Every aspect of plants with silver foliage is covered
in this valuable new book.
And how we’ve waited for a new book on silvers. In 1971,
Mrs. Desmond Underwood published the classic Grey and Silver Plants,
which featured a select few. Here is a much wider range—from Agave and
Artemisia to Veronica, Yucca, and Zauschneria—which is both a strength
and a weakness of the book. Covering annuals, tropicals, shrubs,
alpines, palms, perennials, and trees in one alphabetical list showcases
the breadth of possibilities but choices for any given climate or
situation are limited.
However, a book depends not only on its coverage but on
good writing and good photography. Here the writing is both detailed and
accessible—a combination which defeats many writers—and, like all the
best gardening books, when you look up something in particular, you’ll
find yourself reading on. The advice on choosing silvers is wise and
based on experience. The account of the development of gardening with
silvers and the connection with xeriscaping is fascinating. Plants and
their needs are described well although there are some nomenclatural
eccentricities.
The photographs by Karen Bussolini are excellent but the
elegance of these silvers would have been shown off more effectively in
a book in a larger format; the pictures suffer from being shoe-horned
into narrow, upright pages.
Even still, as the first book on the subject for many years, Elegant
Silvers will tempt both the skeptical and the cognoscenti. And I hope it
will be followed by both a fat encyclopedia of silvers and a more
sumptuous book on using silvers in planting combinations.
Graham Rice
Graham Rice is a member of a number of Royal Horticultural Society
committees, the winner of five awards for garden writing, and the author
of The Sweet Pea Book (Timber Press).
 A
Garden By the Sea: A Practical Guide and Journal
Leila Hadley. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New
York, New York, 2005. 217 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $35.
Buy This Book
What happens when a world traveler, sophisticated author, and garden
enthusiast stays home and plants her own beachfront? If she’s Leila
Hadley, she writes a witty, informative book. And it’s about time, as
the last coastline classic—Daniel J. Foley’s Gardening by the
Sea—appeared in 1965.
But beyond filling a void, Hadley provides gardeners—no
matter their locale—with an astonishing range of advice, from design
basics, which, she cautions “isn’t about what other people have done,
but what’s right for your site—and you,” to spreading salt in winter: “a
disaster for all things you hope to see green…and champion stain maker
when tracked indoors.”
Nearly two dozen chapters focus ostensibly on such
subjects as spring bulbs, white gardens, or fruiting trees. But each is
really a discourse well beyond its title, since Hadley is curious about
everything and shares what she’s learned. The sight of a hummingbird in
her garden, for example, is a reminder to plant ‘Summer Breeze’ anise
hyssop whose peach-pink blooms are filled with nectar. A rumination on a
dearth of dandelions (her husband had them removed) segues from the
British pronunciation of the French dent de lion into the plants’
historic herbal uses. While Queen Anne’s lace, she notes, is a “reliable
signifier of poor soil.”
Hadley’s plant lists also reflect personal enthusiasms:
Native species for pollinating insects, drought-resistant species, and
shrubs prized by birds. The eternal optimist, her successes seem a
natural product of disaster; after a hurricane felled large trees, a new
path to a formerly obscured water vista results in discovery of two rare
wildflowers, Angelica lucida and Chenopodium rubrum.
A voracious reader, she enjoys quoting a variety of wits,
from Samuel Johnson (“All wonder is the effect of novelty upon
ignorance”) to Milton Berle (“A thing of beauty is a job forever”). And
so this erudite author of general literature has moved smoothly into
garden writing. Maybe it helps that Gertrude Jekyll was her
grandmother’s friend.
Linda Yang
Linda Yang, a former garden writer for The New York Times, is author of
several garden books including The City Gardener’s Handbook (Storey
Publications).
 A
Natural History of Ferns
Robbin C. Moran, introduction by Oliver Sacks. Timber Press,
Portland, Oregon, 2004. 301 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $29.95.
Buy This Book
Fine writing needs to transcend genre and A Natural History of Ferns
succeeds on many levels—so much so that the Garden Writers Association
awarded the book a silver Garden Media Award for best talent in writing.
Moran, a fern curator at the New York Botanical Garden, enthralls and
educates the reader with a well crafted, many layered story, one that
winds through 340 million years of survival and adaptation.
This collection of essays, which can be read one
satisfying morsel at a time and in no particular order, delves into the
fascinating world of ferns. Some of the twelve thousand fern species
alive today include floating ferns, others that grow on trees, and some
that become trees—not to mention forests of giant horsetails, a
primitive fern that dwarfed the botanists who discovered them in their
swampy habitat of multihued muck.
Each essay begins with a captivating story or literary
reference that entices you to read on. We learn about the historic roles
of ferns, and, as unlikely as it may seem, about ferns in movies. The
book describes remarkable fern adaptations such as fern scale trees that
can breathe through their roots, tree fern roots that can hold their own
against mangling chain saws, and poisonous bracken ferns Moran calls
“the Lucrezia Borgia of the fern world.” He waxes rhapsodic about the
joy of observing spores discharging from leaves, which he says is like
“watching popcorn popping.” There’s also an intriguing chapter, “The
Asexual Revolution,” that explains why fern chastity (“the most
peculiar…of all sexual aberrations”) has not stopped reproduction in its
tracks.
These masterfully written tales and the solid science
behind them make this a terrific book for fern enthusiasts or anyone
interested in our natural world.
Darrell Trout
Darrell Trout is a garden writer, lecturer, director of the Garden
Writers Association, and a judge for America in Bloom, a national
beautification contest. His fourth book is First Garden: Getting Started
in Northeast Gardening (Cool Springs Press).
GARDENER’S BOOKS
Summer Reading
During the dog days of summer, the heat can drive even the most devoted
gardener indoors. Fortunately, there’s plenty of vicarious gardening to
do by reading about it. Here’s a selection of books published within the
last year with a decidedly literary bent, sure to provide ideas and
inspiration for your own garden.
 Most
of us have a story about how we got into gardening or what our gardens
mean to us. If you’re curious about other people’s experiences,
Garden Voices: Stories of Women & Their Gardens (Water Dance Press,
2005, $14.95)
Buy This Book
by Carolyn Freas Rapp shares the stories of 12
women who find joy, peace, purpose, healing, and many other intangible
benefits in their gardens. Along with cultivating the soil, through
their gardens, these women cultivate everything from lifelong
friendships to a better understanding of themselves. Together, their
stories are a testament to the power of gardens to enrich our lives in
myriad ways.
 In
the case of one particularly famous woman, Emily Dickinson, her gardens
often inspired her poetry. Emily Dickinson’s Gardens: A Celebration
of a Poet and Gardener (McGraw Hill, 2004, $18.95)
Buy This Book
by Marta McDowell takes readers on a seasonal tour of
Dickinson’s gardens at the Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. This
well-researched book is a unique biography of Dickinson as a gardener
rather than a poet. It describes the plants she grew and includes
interesting tidbits on how she used certain plants. For example, “When
Emily baked gingerbread, she used [pansies] to decorate the flat shiny
tops.” Many of her poems inspired by plants and her gardens accompany
the text.
 According
to Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stanley Kunitz, a garden is a form of
poetry, as he explains in The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a
Century in the Garden (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005, $23.95)
Buy This Book
written with Genine Lentine.
Approaching his 100th birthday this July, Kunitz reflects on his
lifelong love of plants and words. Prose interspersed with poems and
charming photographs share Kunitz’s unique perspective; he weaves
together the art forms of gardens and poems as a celebration of the
natural world and life itself. “I think of gardening as an extension of
one’s own being, something as deeply personal and intimate as writing a
poem,” he writes.
 Memoir
fans may enjoy Four Tenths of an Acre (Random House, 2005,
hardcover, $24.95)
Buy This Book
by Laurie Lisle. This book is “a modern pastoral, part
garden book and part memoir, which celebrates the role of nature in
contemporary life,” Lisle explains. Moving from New York City to a
property in a little village in Connecticut after a divorce, she
chronicles the triumphs and tribulations she experiences—both in her
garden and in her life—during the next 20 years she spends there.
 On
the historical side, there’s Oak: The Frame of Civilization (W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2005, $24.95)
Buy This Book
by William Bryant Logan. An arborist, Logan
authoritatively approaches this insightful profile of one of the world’s
most ubiquitous and important trees. Addressing how oaks have supported
and sustained civilization through the ages, sometimes in surprising
ways, he explores topics ranging from balanoculture (acorn-eating) to
the many uses of their strong wood. Logan also delves into the biology
and ecology of the Quercus genus as well as fascinating legends and
lore.
 In
Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest (University of
Georgia Press, 2005, $24.95)
Buy This Book
author Joan Maloof focuses on several tree species in a
series of essays that blend natural history with memoir. A professor of
biology and environmental studies, she skillfully explains the virtues
of various tree species and their intricate ecological niches. As an
ardent admirer of all things arboreal, Maloof eloquently entices readers
to share her passion for preserving and appreciating them.
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor
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