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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
July/August 2006 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 2006 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
Gardening in Small Spaces
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 The
Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants
Anna Pavord. Bloomsbury, New York, New York, 2005. 471 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $45.
Buy This Book
It’s easy for plant enthusiasts today to take for granted the plant
classification system we all know, but this system of categorizing
plants and animals beginning with kingdom and becoming more specific as
you work down to family, genus, and species is the result of millennia
of study and reflection. In The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in
the World of Plants, Anna Pavord, best known for her popular book, The
Tulip, traces the course of our understanding of the nature of plants
and our attempts to categorize and name them.
Although her topic is academic, Pavord makes it
fascinating. She cares passionately about the subject, and it’s
contagious. She begins with the theories of early philosophers working
circa 500 b.c., who postulated that air contains the seeds of all
things. When washed to the ground by rain, some of these seeds produced
plants. Another theory was that plants were animals with their feet in
the air and their mouths in the ground.
A major breakthroug came in 300 b.c., when Theophrastus
published two volumes describing 600 known plants and suggesting that
they be divided into four categories: trees, shrubs, subshrubs, and
herbs. We still use those categories today. However, 2,000 years passed
after Theophrastus wrote his books before much more intellectual
progress was made. Scholars such as Leonhart Fuch and John Ray in the
16th and 17th centuries finally arrived at our modern way of naming and
ordering the plant kingdom.
Pavord’s epilogue gives a nod to the work of 20th and
21st century scientists. New technological breakthroughs, such as the
invention of the electron microscope and the discovery of DNA, have
created a new ground shift in our understanding of how plants should be
systematized. Today’s botanists, who are trained as physicists,
phytochemists, and molecular systematicists, are again refining and
redefining the way we order plants.
This richly illustrated book, which recently won a 2006
Annual Literature Award from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural
Libraries, is lengthy and at times repetitive, but anyone who takes the
time to read it will be rewarded with a deeper appreciation of
humanity’s intellectual journey toward understanding and categorizing
the plant kingdom.
Catriona Tudor Erler
Catriona Tudor Erler is the author of eight garden books, including
Poolscaping: Gardening and Landscaping Around Your Swimming Pool and Spa
(Storey Publishing, 2003).
 Armitage’s
Native Plants for American Gardens
Allan M. Armitage. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2006. 448 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $49.95.
Buy This Book
People are drawn to native plants for many reasons, from aesthetics to
conservation. If you love the beauty of North American plants, and wish
to learn more about how to grow them, this book is sure to please. In a
straightforward A-to- Z format, Armitage’s conversational and
opinionated prose introduces you to some of the showiest and
easiest-to-grow plants that originate within what he refers to as
“mainland America.” A step ahead of other volumes that cover similar
ground, Armitage includes annuals, bulbs, ferns, and grasses, as well as
perennials for a total of 630 species.
Headings call out ecological and cultural information for
easy reference. Propagation methods are highlighted as well. An
additional header of particular interest describes the etymology of the
botanical as well as the common names. Useful lists of plant sources and
societies and plants with particular traits such as deer resistance and
drought tolerance round out the volume.
A high point of the book for some readers will surely be
the up-to-date cultivar lists. There are, however, some problems with
these. Several of the ferns and grasses covered, while native to North
America, are also native to Europe or Asia. Most of their listed
cultivars are of foreign origin, not selected from native American
stock.
Overall, the quality of the photographs is high, though there are
exceptions, and a handful of photos are mislabeled. As in all his books,
Armitage takes a personal approach to taxonomy, acknowledging some
revisions while ignoring others. As a result, names are not always
up-to-date, but they are usually representative of those being used in
the nursery industry.
“This book is not written for extreme native plant
enthusiasts,” explains Armitage. “In fact, I suspect the right wing of
the ‘Native Party’ will not particularly like this book.” The featured
species are more representative of herbaceous plants that happen to be
native rather than native plants that are herbaceous. He goes on to say
that the book “is written for [people] who would love to try some native
plants but don’t know where to start.” If you are one of those people,
this book is for you.
C. Colston Burrell
C. Colston Burrell is a plantsman, garden designer, and author of
Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide (Timber Press, 2006).
 Montrose:
Life in a Garden
Nancy Goodwin with illustrations by Ippy Patterson. Duke University
Press, Durham & London, 2005. 292 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover:
$34.95.
Buy This Book
Is a garden a place, an artistic arrangement of well-sited plants, or a
unique expression of the gardener who created it? This engaging book,
which reads like a memoir of a year in the life of Nancy Goodwin’s
20-acre North Carolina garden, known as Montrose, leaves no doubt that a
great garden is all of these things, and more. “I am tied to this place
in every way,” Goodwin writes. “This place is my life and its garden my
obsession.”
Fans of Goodwin’s first plant loves—hellebores and
cyclamens—may recall Montrose as the name of the nursery business she
ran there from 1984 to 1993. But when the demands of running a nursery
left no time for developing the garden, Goodwin followed her heart and
put all of her energy into making Montrose into the place she dreamed it
could be. Telling the garden’s story in month-by-month format creates a
sense of immediacy. This chronological structure also serves as a
perfect platform for Goodwin’s precise yet cleverly droll writing style.
As the chapters unfold, so does the story of a 44-year
marriage between a husband who dons protective goggles to help move a
spiny old agave from the greenhouse to its place in the sun, and a wife
who gradually grows away from her first vocation as a music teacher and
blossoms into one of America’s most gifted gardeners.
Goodwin works hard, often weeding until it’s too dark to see, but long
hours of toil are tempered by her delight with the thousands of little
miracles that surround her. Among these are her plants, the family cats,
and a small, devoted staff.
Even the weeding itself brings her “an almost indescribable joy.” As she
writes, “I always feel a release of tension, a thrill when my hands and
knees reach the soil, and satisfaction when I pull a weed up by the
roots.”
The pages are graced by more than 160 drawings by Ippy
Patterson, an award-winning garden illustrator who lives only a short
drive from Montrose. These masterful illustrations include a
subtly-tinted silverbell bough (Halesia carolina), which aptly fills an
entire page, and a drawing of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), which
is a triumph.
Barbara Pleasant
North Carolina garden writer Barbara Pleasant is the author of numerous
books including Garden Stone (Storey Publishing, 2002).
GARDENER'S BOOKS
Gardening in Small Spaces
No matter where I’ve gardened—from a rooftop container garden to a
modest suburban yard—I never seemed to have enough room for all that I
wanted to grow. After coming to terms with the fact that my space for
gardening always will be finite, I realized that the options and
possibilities for filling that space are virtually limitless. However,
when every inch in your garden counts, it pays to do a little research
on how to use it to best advantage.
 “Creating
an attractive and functional small space hideaway has its special
opportunities,” writes Melinda Myers in Small Space Gardening
(Cool Springs Press, 2006, $18.99).
Buy This Book
“And also, needless to say, its special challenges,” she
adds. In the book, Myers discusses strategies for maximizing your space
such as the judicious use of containers, espalier, and selecting
columnar or dwarf varieties of plants. She also discusses the basics of
the design process, garden preparation, and planting how-to. The book
concludes with a directory of plants—listed by common name—that is
divided into color-coded sections for flowers, groundcovers, ornamental
grasses, shrubs, trees, and vines. Myers painstakingly selected these
plants for size, seasons of interest, and heat and cold tolerance. A
color photograph accompanies each entry as well as a brief description
and suggestions for how to use it.
 In
Small Garden (DK Publishing, 2006, $19.95)
Buy This Book,
garden designer John Brookes explains, “The key to realizing the
potential of your small space, in both visual and practical terms, is
design—this involves planning and styling your space so that it suits
your way of life, as well as the character of your home and its
surroundings.” Chapters on style, design, structure, and planting
illuminate all the important elements to consider. The chapter titled
“Case Studies” looks at four small gardens the author has built, which
“demonstrate the usability and charm of small spaces well designed.” The
final chapter includes plant lists, categorized by their design uses—for
example, “plants with form” and “plants for color.” Color photographs on
nearly every one of the book’s 352 pages offer plenty of ideas for
integrating hardscape, water features, lighting, furniture, and plants
into a cohesive small garden.
 Intimate
Gardens by C. Colston Burrell with Lucy Hardiman (Brooklyn Botanic
Garden, 2005, $9.95)
Buy This Book
not only deals with creating gardens in small spaces, but
also with defining intimate havens within larger areas. For either
situation, many of the same design considerations apply. The book points
out that “Intimacy comes when a variety of elements coalesce into a
harmonious composition. These elements include well-proportioned spaces,
a comfortable sense of enclosure, and captivating plants.” Design plans
for a terrace garden, a woodland garden, and a courtyard garden help to
illustrate these concepts. Just over half of this slim handbook is
devoted to an “encyclopedia” of plants that are suited for intimate
gardens, “carefully chosen to provide for a wide range of forms, colors,
and textures.”
 How
about a bumper crop of vegetables from a small garden? Mel Bartholomew
will tell you how in All New Square Foot Gardening (Cool Springs
Press, 2006, $19.99)
Buy This Book.
As the title implies, this is a revised version of a book published in
1981 that first laid out the concept of square-foot gardening. By
questioning the tradition of planting in rows, Bartholomew developed a
method to make gardening easier and more efficient by planting in a
four-foot-by-four-foot grid divided into square-foot sections. Since
that time, Bartholomew has perfected his system in several ways, which
he divulges in the updated edition. The book also includes instructions
for planning, building, and planting a square-foot garden.
 On
the truly tiny end of the size spectrum, there’s Tabletop Gardens
by Rosemary McCreary (Storey Publishing, 2006, $16.95)
Buy This Book.
For those with only indoor space to spare, or for those who would like
to bring the outdoors in, this book will inspire you to go “beyond the
traditional houseplant to a broader sense of ‘garden’.” According to
McCreary, “Small-scale interior landscapes challenge our creativity and
yield exciting plant combinations that are often impossible outdoors.”
Water gardens, herb gardens, and flower gardens are just some of the
possibilities. You’ll also find ideas for terrariums, dish gardens, and
gravel gardens, all accompanied by artistic color photographs. Most of
these “plantscapes” include a materials list, simple instructions, and
tips for ongoing maintenance. The final chapter addresses plant care in
more detail, offering tips on providing the right amounts of nutrients,
water, and light, and how to repot and propagate.
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor
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