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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
November/December 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 November/December 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
A Potpourri of Tempting Titles
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 Yard
Full of Sun: The Story of a Gardener’s Obsession That Got a Little Out
of Hand. Scott Calhoun. Rio Nuevo Publishers, Tucson, Arizona, 2005.
192 pages. Publisher’s price, softcover: $22.95.
Buy This Book
What do Noah Webster, Peter O’Toole, and Wile E. Coyote have in common?
Each has contributed to society’s misguided notions about deserts. In
his dictionary, Webster defined a desert as “a desolate or forbidding
area.” This scary image would later be “confirmed” in movies such as
Lawrence of Arabia and all those Roadrunner cartoons.
In fact, the deserts of the Southwest are alive with a
variety of vibrant colors, textures, and forms, and over the years, a
number of books have attempted to counter all that unfriendly
propaganda. Among the very best is Scott Calhoun’s Yard Full of Sun.
Calhoun is a professional nurseryman living in Tucson.
Besides being an exceptional gardener, he is also a gifted writer; he
tells the story of his (and his family’s) horticultural odyssey with wit
and a delightful earthiness—qualities all too rare in gardening
literature. His book reads like a chatty letter from a friend.
“Where Phoenix had largely rejected the Sonoran Desert,” Calhoun
observes, “Tucson embraced it.” So did the Calhouns. The author details
the building of his family’s resource-conserving “green” home, and the
designing of their Sonoran garden. His plant profiles are full of solid
information as well as personal anecdotes, including a thwarted prairie
zinnia raid at a local library.
One of the requisites of a good gardening book is good
photography, and we are not disappointed here. The pictures of plants
and gardens are first-rate, thanks to the combined camera skills of
Calhoun, his wife Deirdre, and W. Ross Humphreys. The photo of an
ocotillo fence is pure art.
Calhoun also provides useful plant lists, rainfall
charts, and lists of public gardens and native nurseries in all the
Southwestern states. He even throws in some prickly pear recipes.
If you live in New Jersey or Iowa, you’ll find this book
a delightful read. If you live in the Southwest, it’ll be one of your
most valuable resources.
Andy Wasowski
Andy Wasowski and his wife, Sally, have authored nine books on native
landscaping, including Requiem for a Lawnmower: Gardening in a Warmer,
Drier World. They live near Taos, New Mexico.
 Attracting
Birds, Butterflies & Other Winged Wonders to Your Backyard
Kris Wetherbee. Lark Books, New York, New York, 2004. 176 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $24.95.
Buy This Book
Kris Wetherbee, in collaboration with her photographer husband Rick, has
created an attractive, illustrated, step-by-step guide to help you
entice birds and butterflies to visit and nest in your garden. After
introducing wildlife’s basic needs—food, fresh water, and shelter—she
elaborates with chapters full of projects and illustrated instructions
for providing them.
Every page contains captivating pictures—from birds at
feeders, to tandem damselflies, to charming birdhouses. The author
approaches her topic with passion and from an apparent wealth of
personal experience, providing practical tips throughout, such as
filling bird feeders at night and placing stones for butterflies to bask
on. Descriptive lists of plants with their wildlife value, sections on
how to design and garden, and profiles of 15 bird types, 10 butterfly
and four moth groups, and six dragonfly/damselfly genera round out the
text.
On occasion, the book misses opportunities to enlighten
its readers. Despite several mentions of checking with local nurseries
for advice about plants that will grow well in one’s conditions, there’s
no emphasis on the value to wildlife of growing regional species—for
example, the need of some species for the protective effect of chemicals
in the nectar of flowers with which they coevolved. And although a
sidebar extols the virtues of natural pest control, the book does not
explicitly warn that using pesticides may undo your good work in
attracting beneficial wildlife.
Readers will find well-written instructions for making 11
different nest boxes (including those for robins, screech owls, and
chickadees). There are six feeder projects, such as hanging platform,
covered bridge, and butterfly fruit feeder, and four projects for
providing water in the garden, which range from—my personal favorite—a
simple flowerpot birdbath to a full-out mini wetland. A delightful
chapter, titled “Enjoying the Show,” teaches how and when to get out in
the yard to find and enjoy these winged wonders.
Elizabeth Schwartz
Elizabeth Schwartz teaches native-plant gardening at the University of
California–Los Angeles Extension.
Growing Hardy Orchids
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $29.95.
Buy This Book
The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Hardy Perennial Orchids
William Mathis. The Wild Orchid Company, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 2005.
104 pages. Publisher’s price, softcover: $24.95.
Buy This Book
 Orchids! The very
name conjures up images of colorful, exotic flowers in a hobbyist’s
humid greenhouse, or vigorous plants laden with oversized blooms on
display in a botanical garden’s conservatory. With over 50,000 species
and hybrids in cultivation, most of which are easily grown and more
readily available than ever, tropical orchid appreciation is among the
world’s most popular pastimes.
Until a few years ago, these were the only scenarios for growing orchids
in the temperate zone. In the 1980s, knowledgeable and forward-thinking
folks exchanged ideas at two ground-breaking symposia that focused on
growing native terrestrial orchids and discussed the problems of
propagating them from seeds, division, and tissue culture. That was the
beginning. Now, suddenly, there are two great books that offer gardeners
detailed information about growing hardy orchids in the backyard.
 Growing
Hardy Orchids and The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Hardy Perennial
Orchids are excellent books that contain well-researched discussions of
plants and planting techniques, and sources of commercially propagated
species. Both books have fully illustrated galleries of orchids.
John Tullock’s book is the more thoughtful of the two in
presenting his personal views on orchids in nature, their conservation,
and the problems with previous efforts to grow hardy species. He
describes his tested soil mixes and growing situations that anyone can
follow. The pictures of plants and bed preparation are also very good.
The book by William Mathis focuses more on growing
techniques, and less on background and philosophical issues. He also
includes some good photos of unusual hybrids and companion plants, such
as pitcher plants for the bog garden.
While certain hardy orchid genera have long been available—such as
Calanthe, Cypripedium, Platanthera, and Pleione—helpful information
about them was obscure. With these books, you won’t have to content
yourself with wishing you could grow these and others in your garden,
you’ll know how.
Larry Mellichamp
Larry Mellichamp is director of the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte Botanical Gardens and co-author of The Winter Garden.
GARDENER'S BOOKS
A Potpourri of Tempting Titles
Looking for a good book to dig into on a cold winter’s day? Or perhaps
you’re hoping to find the perfect holiday gift for a gardening friend.
These tantalizing titles could do the trick. From understanding insect
pests to timesaving garden tips, each book offers unique, useful, and
fascinating insights into the horticultural world.
 Most
gardeners bristle at the thought of marauding aphids and voracious
Japanese beetles, but in Insights from Insects: What Bad Bugs Can
Teach Us (Prometheus Books, 2005, $18),
Buy This Book
Gilbert Waldbauer makes the case
that if you really stop and get to know these insects, you’ll find
they’re actually quite amazing creatures. “We know much more about pest
insects—those that conflict with our interests—than about the great
majority of other insects,” explains Waldbauer. “Fortunately, what we
learn about pest insects applies to all insects, and teaches us a great
deal about the role of insects in a worldwide web of life, upon which we
depend for our very existence.” The book profiles 20 pernicious pests
from mosquitoes and house flies to gypsy moths and corn earworms to
reveal intriguing insights into ecology, natural selection, genetics,
and more.
 For
those who wish to hone their gardening skills or want to perform garden
chores more efficiently, there’s 100 Garden Tips and Timesavers,
one of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s All Region Guides (Brooklyn Botanic
Garden, 2005, $9.95).
Buy This Book
“I’ve tried to make the most of my
time in the garden by using a combination of inspiration, ingenuity, and
a fair amount of common sense to find shortcuts to a beautiful, healthy,
abundant garden,” writes author Walter Chandoha. In this handy little
volume, he has picked 100 of his tips to share, from Number 1:
“Deadheading Annuals for Repeat Blooms,” to Number 10: “Reusing Toy
Wagons.” Tips are organized into categories such as “Garden Design” and
“Improving the Soil” for easy reference, and illustrated with color
photographs and diagrams.
 Some
of the largest plants on earth star in The Golden Spruce: A Story of
Myth, Madness, and Greed (W.W. Norton, 2005, $24.95) by John
Vaillant.
Buy This Book
Set in the old-growth forests of
Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands, this true tale opens with a mysterious
kayak washing up on a remote island in some of the roughest waters in
the world. How it got there and why can only be answered by first
exploring the rich natural history of the region, which revolves around
the native Haida people and their encounters with early explorers, fur
traders, and finally loggers. One logger in particular has an integral
and unexpected part to play in this vividly written and well-researched
story about the golden spruce, a 300-year-old tree the Haida held
sacred.
 A
mutant golden spruce is just one example of the weird and wonderful
variations found in the plant kingdom. The Nature of Plants:
Habitats, Challenges and Adaptations by Jason Dawson and Rob Lucas
(Timber Press, 2005, $39.95)
Buy This Book
takes a thorough and scholarly look
at the incredible diversity of plant life, spurred by the need to adapt
to our planet’s extremely variable conditions. Readers will discover how
plants have not only managed to gain a foothold from the world’s tropics
to the poles, but to thrive in spite of drought, floods, fire, heat, and
cold, not to mention the animals, fungi, and bacteria that use them for
food. Over 200 color photographs further augment this fascinating book.
 In
light of such diversity, one might wonder why there are so many plant
species in any given region when natural selection tends to favor only
the best survivors. In Demons in Eden: the Paradox of Plant Diversity
(University of Chicago Press, 2005, $25),
Buy This Book
ecologist Jonathan Silvertown takes on the challenge of
answering this question. He leads readers on a journey around the globe,
looking at what can happen when “the Darwinian demon hiding in every
species” is unleashed and how biodiversity persists in spite of these
“demonic” tendencies. While this may sound like rather cerebral subject
matter, Silvertown has a knack for explaining complex biological
concepts in an accessible and engaging way. He deftly uses analogy and
example to illuminate his discussions, and often waxes lyrical in his
descriptions.
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor.
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