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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
November/December 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 November/December 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
From the Garden to the Table
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 The
Welcoming Garden: Designing Your Own Front Garden Gordon Hayward.
Gibbs Smith, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2006. 144 pages. Publisher’s price,
hardcover: $29.95.
Buy This Book
“The new American garden,” writes author Gordon Hayward, “is about
walking among our plants, not walking past them.” This statement
captures the spirit of his new book on front gardens, The Welcoming
Garden. Hayward is in favor of surrounding the house with a garden, of
living inside a garden instead of adjacent to it. In this spirit, he has
created a practical and inspiring guide to re-thinking the front yard.
Although this is not entirely a rip-out-your-lawn book—many of the
gardens pictured in the book have retained some lawn—it certainly comes
at a time when many Americans are rethinking the value of their lawns.
As lots get smaller and water restrictions become a way of life in many
parts of the country, people are looking for alternatives to lawns. A
front garden can provide shade, act as a wildlife habitat, and encourage
a connection with neighbors. As Hayward explains, there’s a front garden
to meet every need.
He encourages gardeners to develop an overall style, a plan to guide the
development of the garden. Consider sight lines for motorists and
pedestrians. Think about whether you’d like to sit in your front garden.
Decide how the garden will relate to the architectural style of the
house. To help with these decisions, he offers color photographs and
encourages readers to interpret those photographs in ways that might
apply to their situation.
Fortunately, this is not a book that showcases sprawling mansions and
gardens designed on an unlimited budget. Hayward deals very effectively
with the reality of ordinary front gardens, devoting a chapter to
driveways and garages, another to deciding how much lawn to keep, and
another to planting in sidewalk strips and around mailboxes.
My favorite part of the book was a section at the end in which he
describes a front garden that runs the entire length of the block,
extending across the front yard of every home on the street. This shared
garden reflects the kind of community spirit that is possible when
neighbors come together, and it shows just how welcoming a front garden
can be.
Amy Stewart
Amy Stewart is the author of Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and
the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers.
 Teaming
With Microbes A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web Jeff Lowenfels
and Wayne Lewis. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon,
2006. 196 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover: $24.95.
Buy This Book
A breakthrough book both for the field of organic gardening and for its
authors, Teaming with Microbes takes the empirically based, common sense
approach that has characterized good gardeners since time immemorial and
provides a solid scientific background for their practices.
The authors start with a basic but solid discussion of the microbial
life of the soil—the real organic material of organic gardening—that is
a marvel of clarity. There is just enough nomenclature to make the
relationships between each group of soil dwelling organisms clear,
without getting bogged down in the taxonomic detail—and controversy—that
burdens some specialist texts.
They then discuss the effect of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on
the microbial community, and how methods and materials that work with,
rather than overrule, that community help to create a garden and
landscape that is not only healthier, but also requires less
maintenance. These are not new ideas; they have been around longer, in
fact, than the high-tech alternatives prevalent over the last 50 to 100
years, but Lowenfels and Lewis do a great service by putting the
time-tested truisms of organic gardening into a form that ought to be
convincing to even the most beaker-wielding and lab coat-clad skeptic.
The practical solutions they offer for gardens that have been ruled by
the now debunked chemical paradigm are simple: compost and compost tea.
The passion one man may feel about wines, Lewis and Lowenfels clearly
feel about compost tea. They go into great detail about how to make and
apply both tea and compost.
The book includes a short “seasonal task list” chapter as well as an
appendix that lists 19 “Soil Food Web Gardening Rules,” which, while
useful, is not as coherent or well-organized as the rest of the book. A
resource list and index are also provided, and plenty of sharp color
photographs back up the book’s jargon-free (but still Latin-rich) text.
All in all, Teaming With Microbes is a book well worth owning and
reading. No comprehensive horticultural library should be without it.
Shepherd Ogden
Shepherd Ogden is director of Heritage Organics in Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, and a former associate editor of this magazine.
 Gardening
with Heirloom Seeds: Tried-and-True Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables for
a New Generation Lynn Coulter. The University of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2006. 328 pages. Publisher’s price,
hardcover: $34.95.
Buy This Book
This pleasant book leads us cheerfully and invitingly through the
seasons, sowing and growing heirloom plants. Lynn Coulter’s light,
informative style makes this book good reading for both new gardeners
and those already smitten with seed sowing and heirlooms. Although
written from a southeastern gardener’s viewpoint, nearly all the
information applies even in my cold garden in northern Michigan.
Attractive color photographs, historic catalog illustrations, and seed
packet covers illustrate the text, while wide margins encourage
note-taking by the gardener.
Accounts of annual flowers and vegetables—alphabetized by common
names—form the backbone of the text, supplemented by a few classic
perennials such as pinks and columbines. I was pleased to find some of
my favorites listed, such as ‘Emperor William’ cornflowers, edible-pod
radishes, and ‘Black Prince’ snapdragons, and excited to read about
other heirlooms I have not yet tried. Next year I shall sow ‘Yellow
Twilight’ four o’clocks, ‘Countess Cadogan’ sweet peas, and
‘Cinderella’s Carriage’ pumpkins.
When I was a kid, I loved the towering hollyhocks in my grandma’s Iowa
garden that reached eight or nine feet in bloom. Thanks to this book,
now I know they were an heirloom strain, ‘Outhouse Hollyhocks’, which
was often used to shield outdoor privies from view. And now I know that
the ‘Oxheart’ carrots on our cheese-and-veggie sandwiches from the co-op
at college—one huge, thin, sweet slice per sandwich—were heirlooms as
well.
Of more practical interest are seed-sowing and seed-saving tips, brief
yet adequate cultural instructions for growing the plants, and a list of
commercial sources for the seeds.
My only complaint about the book is minor: The title implies that the
book covers fruits as well as flowers and veggies, and although
technically tomatoes and pumpkins are fruit, I was a bit disappointed to
find no mention of berries, stone fruits, and so on. Most of the plants
that produce these types of fruit, of course, will not come true from
seed, so the problem lies not with the book, but with the title.
Gardening with Heirloom Seeds is delightful to peruse with morning
coffee, with evening tea, or anytime the gardener needs a break from
daily cares. Whether you read it straight though or in bits and pieces,
you’ll find it informative and diverting.
Nancy McDonald
Freelance writer Nancy McDonald gardens with her husband, dog, and horse
in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
GARDENER'S BOOKS
American Gardens for the Public
Public gardens serve as places of beauty, inspiration, research,
learning, and conservation. Many have unique and fascinating histories,
and have become a highly valued part of our horticultural heritage.
These gardens often sponsored expeditions to bring back new plants and
freely borrowed design ideas from other parts of the world, but the end
result, as the following recently published books will attest, is
something uniquely American.
 While
many of the first botanical gardens in Europe initially focused on the
collection and study of medicinal plants, the “most significant
contribution made by Americans to the concept of botanical gardens is
that they have become, above all, educational institutions,” according
to The New York Botanical Garden (Abrams, 2006, $50)
Buy This Book
. Edited by NYBG’s President and
CEO Gregory Long and New York Public Library Editor Anne Skillion, this
book takes the reader on a tantalizing tour of one of the world’s
leading botanical gardens through well-written text and stunning
photographs. Sections on the plant collections, research collections,
and educational programs describe this 250-acre garden’s many resources
and contributions to botany and horticulture.
 Beginning
in the 18th century, botany became an increasingly popular “field of
inquiry,” explains author Carol Grove in Henry Shaw’s Victorian
Landscapes: The Missouri Botanical Garden and Tower Grove Park
(University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, $39.35)
Buy This Book
. English-born businessman Henry Shaw caught the
botanizing bug, resulting in another one of America’s prominent public
gardens, the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, which he founded in
1859, and later, nearby Tower Grove Park. Published in association with
the Library of American Landscape History, the book takes a fascinating
historical look at the establishment of these two landscapes and their
development over the ensuing years.
 Another
business tycoon, Pierre du Pont, also gave America a premier public
garden, described in Longwood Gardens: 100 Years of Garden Splendor
(Longwood Gardens, 2006, $19.99)
Buy This Book
. In this volume, Longwood’s historian, Colvin Randall,
chronicles the garden’s development from its origins as Quaker farmland
in Pennsylvania to the 1,050-acre display of horticultural grandeur it
is today. Published in honor of Longwood’s centennial, the 124-page book
describes how the garden took shape under du Pont’s ownership as he
built fantastic fountains, a grand conservatory, and many other features
that are still part of the garden. The book then explains how, after du
Pont’s death in 1954, Longwood transitioned from a private estate into a
public display garden that has welcomed millions of visitors over the
years. Color and black-and-white photographs of the garden and the
people who influenced its development round out the text.
 A
Paradise in the City: Cleveland Botanical Garden by Diana Tittle
(Orange Frazer Press, 2005, $39.95)
Buy This Book
tells the story of a public garden in Ohio that began as
a civic project in 1930 to preserve a small collection of gardening
books and horticultural references. The book leads off with a brief
history that includes a handful of black-and-white photographs depicting
the garden’s origins as the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland. The rest
of the book’s pages are filled with lively descriptions and interesting
tidbits about the garden, along with color photographs by Ian Adams and
Jennie Jones that showcase the beautiful urban haven the Cleveland
Botanical Garden has become.
 Bayou
Bend Gardens: A Southern Oasis (Scala Publishers, 2006, $45)
Buy This Book
is also about a public garden with its origins in
the early part of the 20th century. “Bayou Bend represents an
outstanding example of the neo-antebellum garden of the ‘Southern Garden
Renaissance’,” writes author David B. Warren, “and an extraordinarily
well-preserved example of American gardening that accompanied the final
stage of the Country House Movement.” Warren infuses his account of the
gardens’ history with an intimate familiarity you might expect from his
38-year career at Bayou Bend, which included serving as the director.
Modern and historical photographs also help to bring this garden in
Houston, Texas, to life.
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor
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