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American
Horticultural Society
The American Gardener
July/August 2007 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 Ma y/June2007 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
Summer Reading
BOOK REVIEWS
Recommendations for Your Gardening Library
 Burpee
The Complete Flower Gardener: The Comprehensive Guide to Growing Flowers
Organically
Karan Davis Cutler and Barbara W. Ellis. Wiley Publishing, Inc.,
Hoboken, New Jersey, 2007. 488 pages. Publisher’s price, hardcover:
$34.95.
Buy This Book
living up to the words “complete” and “comprehensive” in its title, this
book does far more than just explain how to care for flowers the organic
way. It looks like a coffee table book, reads like a work of literature,
and works like a how-to or reference manual.
Good soil is the foundation of any organic garden, and so
it’s not surprising that there’s a chapter devoted to that subject, one
to managing pests and diseases organically, and another to planting
seeds and caring for flowers. The book also focuses on design principles
and color theory, and includes specific suggestions for plant
combinations. If you’re looking for ideas for a theme garden, you’ll
find it here with lists of plants to attract butterflies, another for
hummingbirds, as well as ideas for an edible flower garden, a “moon”
garden, a dyer’s garden, and suggestions for specific environments such
as a hillside, pathside, and woodland.
About half the book is an encyclopedia of flowers, but this one goes far
beyond the usual bulleted basic information about height, bloom time,
light and soil preferences, and flower color. Here you’ll learn all
sorts of fascinating tidbits about each plant. For example, did you know
that Allium moly was an antidote to Circe’s poison, thus protecting
Odysseus from being turned into a swine? Or that the name Coreopsis is
from the Greek for “like a bug” because of the seed’s appearance? Hence
the plant’s common name, tickseed.
You have to read through a lot of text to find the basic
information, but, in the process, you’ll learn all sorts of interesting
things, and the index is helpful if you want to skip right to a specific
topic. But beware, you may be looking for average last frost dates for
your region and find yourself sidetracked, absorbed in an explanation of
phenology, the study of recurring natural signs to predict local weather
conditions: “When the dogwood flowers appear/ Frost will not again be
here.”
Catriona Tudor Erler
A resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, Catriona Tudor Erler is the
author of eight garden books, and she has contributed to many more. Her
next book, Design Ideas for Home Landscaping,
will be published in spring 2008.
 Foliage:
Astonishing Color and Texture Beyond Flowers
Nancy J. Ondra. Storey Publishing, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2007. 304
pages. Publisher’s price, softcover: $24.95.
Buy This Book
My background in textile design has made me a diehard foliage gardener,
so I admit to having a predisposed positive bias toward Foliage, the
attractive and accessible new book by Nancy Ondra. I view arranging
differently textured, shaped, and colored foliage plants as a gardener’s
version of designing an art quilt with printed fabrics ranging from tiny
dots to graphic splashes.
Ondra and photographer Rob Cardillo provide newfound
inspiration for foliage choices and combinations. For these
collaborators, foliage is more than mere space filler in the landscape.
Foliage, Ondra writes, “greatly extends the seasonal interest of
individual plants, and of the garden as a whole.”
Chapters in this useful reference are organized by
foliage color: gold-yellow-bronze, red-purple-black, silver-gray-blue,
and variegated-multicolored plants. Plant icons indicate spiky, bold,
medium, fine, and lacy foliage textures, helping to guide the garden
designer in each of us. I especially appreciate that sun and shade
foliage plants are identified, as well as the section on how to deal
with the common diseases and pests that strike foliage plants.
For each palette, Ondra offers a botanical Latin primer
titled “What’s in a Name?” For example, many of us already know that
aurea indicates “gold-colored,” but did you know that flavida means
“yellowish?” Or, how about that nishiki means “brocade,” as in a
patterned fabric?
Plant profiles are the heart of this book, in which Ondra
writes with a confident voice. When she describes a plant, I know she’s
grown it herself. Among Cardillo’s photos are several taken in Ondra’s
own garden in Pennsylvania.
For someone like me, who is still in horticultural shock
from leaving Seattle (USDA Zone 8) for Los Angeles (Zone 10), I am
grateful for the “alternatives” offered with each plant entry. When I
moved to southern California, I left behind a collection of Zone 5 to 8
Japanese maples. Instead, Ondra suggests I try growing selections of
African rose mallow or cranberry hibiscus, which have palmately-lobed,
maplelike, deep red leaves and grow happily in Zones 8 to 11. That tip
alone is worth adding Foliage to my shelf.
Debra Prinzing
Recently transplanted from Seattle to southern California, Debra
Prinzing is a garden and design writer. Her next book,
Stylish Sheds & Elegant Hideaways, will be
published in 2008.
 A
Pattern Garden: The Essential Elements of Garden Making
Valerie Easton. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2007. 216 pages.
Publisher’s price, hardcover: $34.95.
Buy This Book
A Pattern Garden starts with a simple premise: You can make a garden
feel more welcoming and comfortable if you effectively include specific
design elements—what the author terms “patterns.” Valerie Easton says in
the book’s introduction that she wants to make the garden-making process
more accessible for home gardeners by defining what are often intangible
experiences or “felt senses.”
She also acknowledges that this book pays homage to A Pattern Language
by Christopher Alexander (Oxford University Press, 1977), a bible of
sorts for architects, interior designers, and anyone trying to make a
house become a home. That book influenced Easton for many years before
she decided to reinterpret some of its key ideas for gardeners.
According to Easton, these design patterns are essential because they
“deal with the underlying patterns of behavior and form that shape our
experience and stir the emotions.” In other words, they appeal to
archetypal human experiences.
Easton has successfully distilled complex design theory
into 14 distinct patterns that can be interpreted in countless ways,
regardless of a garden’s size, location, or other factors. They include
creating a sense of arrival, instilling feelings of shelter and refuge,
making a journey with paths that are relevant to a setting, balancing
enclosure and openness, using appropriate scale, creating destinations
and focal points, and incorporating water features, containers, and
garden art. For example, the “gates” pattern describes various ways to
create portals that conceal or frame views into a garden.
Easton discusses both practical and psychological issues
to consider in using patterns to foster intrigue, meaning, coherence,
and sheer delight. She emphasizes that personalized and relevant
renditions of these patterns imbue a garden with an aura of being a
special and memorable place.
This book offers an abundance of beautiful photographs
and inspiring and well-organized design ideas, but also provides
insights into why these things matter. A Pattern Garden explores garden
making as an enlivening process that draws on every aspect of human
experience. It tackles and translates big concepts into language and
images that are likely to trigger “aha” moments for the reader. In turn,
that’s likely to inspire aha moments in your garden.
Virginia Small
A former senior editor at Fine Gardening, Virginia Small is now a
freelance writer, editor, speaker, and garden consultant based in
Woodbury, Connecticut. She is currently writing a book on gardens of the
Berkshires to be published in 2008.
GARDENER'S BOOKS
Summer Reading
With spring’s flurry of
planting, pruning, and weeding done - or mostly so in my case -
gardeners finally get to enjoy fresh tomatoes, bouquets of flowers, and
other summery delights. However, during the dog days with the heat,
humidity, and mosquitoes in full throttle, I find myself darting out of
doors only long enough to hose down a few parched plants on the verge of
a crispy death. While I wait out the sultry weather, a book starring
plants helps me get the rest of my gardening fix. Here are some fun and
fascinating titles that just may give the summer’s latest beach novels a
run for their money.
 If
you’re in need of a vicarious road trip, ride shotgun with Scott Calhoun
for a rollicking romp around the Southwest in Chasing
Wildflowers: A Mad Search for Wild Gardens (Rio Nuevo, 2007,
$16.95). The book chronicles a series of visits Calhoun made to six
states from Utah to Texas as well as parts of Mexico over a period of
two years to hunt for indigenous wildflowers. A self-confessed plant
nerd, Calhoun often pulls over to investigate a promising flash of color
on the shoulder of a sun-baked highway, and does “take pains to
correctly identify” the plants he encounters with common and botanical
names. He also blends in tidbits about local cuisine (he has quite a
propensity for fish tacos), people he meets along the way, and even
advice for staying at Motel 6. Many of his wildflower photographs
further enliven this compelling book.
Buy This Book
 For
a divergence into a world of limousines and French chateaus, there’s
The Landscape Diaries: Garden of Obsession (Ruder Finn, 2007,
$24.95). Aptly named, this engaging tale reads somewhat like a private
diary in which Carole Rocherolle, daughter of the late business magnate
Lester Avnet, describes how she literally ran away from her privileged
youth to marry a member of French nobility. However, after she and her
new husband, Jerome, fall into the nursery and landscape business, they
are no strangers to hard work and the rewards it brings. The book
follows the 30-year trajectory of their horticultural development,
including establishing Shanti Bithi Nursery in Connecticut, traveling
the world in search of unusual plants, and the creation of their most
important legacy, the private Steinhart gardens in New York, complete
with stunning color photographs.
Buy This Book
 Fans
of Elizabeth Lawrence will want to get their hands on Beautiful at
All Seasons (Duke University Press, 2007, $24.95), a new collection
of 132 columns this beloved garden writer penned over a period of 14
years for the Charlotte Observer beginning in 1957. Those unfamiliar
with Lawrence will find themselves enchanted with her thoughtful and
conversational writing, akin to a modern day blog. Organized by themes
such as “Seasonal Flowers” or “Gardeners and Gardens,” these short
pieces range widely over gardening tips and insights as well as places,
literature, and people that influenced her. The book even includes a
small collection of black and white photographs of Lawrence and her
garden.
Buy This Book
.
 After
coming across an ancient Chinese almanac that divides the year into 72
periods of five days each, author Liza Dalby felt this system makes a
lot of sense for gardeners because “every week in the garden is a
different season.” In East Wind Melts the Ice (University of
California Press, 2007, $24.95), Dalby weaves her observations about the
natural world and Asian cultures into eloquent and incisive essays as
she charts each of these little seasons in her own garden in Berkeley,
California, and in the larger natural world. Part garden journal and
part memoir, this book presents an intriguing new perspective—for
Westerners at least - on the minute but inexorable seasonal changes
happening every day. Buy This Book
 Another
essay collection, More Papers From the Potting Shed (Frances
Lincoln, 2006, $24.95) comes down more on the wry side of things.
Charles Elliott began gardening in New York and Massachusetts, but for
the last 20 years has been ensconced in the British gardening scene.
Many of the pieces, derived from a column he wrote for Horticulture
magazine, take a humorous look at various gardening quirks in these
cultures—for example “British hedge-rage” versus Americans who “conduct
their lives in full view of their neighbours (sic), to say nothing of
every snoop wandering down the street.” Elliott also weighs in on “a
fairly preposterous range of topics, from medieval grafting practices to
excuses for banning leaf blowers, from [his] own adventures with birds
to the history of guano.”
Buy This Book
Viveka Neveln, Assistant Editor
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