Gardening Books

It is so refreshing to fine a new and simple to follow cookbook. I have hundreds of cook books, Chef Ash teaches and reminds of things we should all know about cooking. If you are just starting to cook or are a seasoned cook you will absolutely love have this in your kitchen. I received this for a Christmas and have not stopped cooking from it. I've made all my friends buy it because I'm tired of writting down the recipes. Get yours now.

I've had the pleasure of taking a cooking class with John Ash. He's fun, informative and passionate about quality, organic food. His knowledge is deep and his ability to communicate, written and verbal, is first rate. The cookbook is loaded with fabulous recipes that are easy to follow and delicious.

I love this cookbook, not only because I love the flavors of the wine country and John Ash has a great mix of recipes that convey them, but also because the philosophy behind the recipes relies so heavily on using fresh, seasonal, local ingredients. The recipes are not super-simple, but if you have some cooking experience and are willing to take the time to search for the best ingredients, the rewards are well worth it.

I have used this book more than any other cookbook in my home. I am constantly learning about new, fresh ingredients and the results are really wonderful. Every time I cook using these recipes, my friends ask me for the recipe. I've purchased this book for several friends too - it's a great gift, especially if you live in Northern California. Visiting John Ash's restaurant is a wonderful experience too!

A new revised and expanded edition of an old favorite. We all know that the process of getting food is to plant, raise, or catch it, then cook and eat it. But John Ash takes it a bit further. He concentrates primarily on serving what is in season now, what he can get fresh - especially fresh from his own garden or at least local.

Sometimes, of course that's a little hard to do. For instance he cooks a lot of fish, tuna, sturgeon, pacific rock cod, halibut and more. It's a whole bunch of miles from here (Nevada) to the ocean, you want tuna, it's frozen. Sturgeon, never seen it here. Cod, I got some a couple of weeks ago for the first time. Now I wish I had had this book then, as the recipie of cooking it with oranges, tomatoes, and olives sounds really different and something worth trying. ==One point I really like about this book is his wine recommendations. With the rock cod he says sauvignon blanc, rieslings, Pinot Grigio or Noir. I think I could go with any of these.

On the whole, his earlier version of this book was good, this new one is even better, more recipies, more things to try, and nearly all of them sound good.

This book offers great tips that will definitely implement in the next few years. My copy is already a well-worn reference!

I'm another purchaser who first tried this book from the library and then knew in days that I needed my own copy. It offers many tips I was familiar with after years of gardening, yet hundreds I'd never heard of. Even if you are not simply looking for ways to garden on a budget, it offers many great gardening tips. Period.

There are plenty of good illustrations and the layout is appealing to the eye. It is well organized and enjoyable to read, not just to use as a resource. This book is money well spent toward your garden.

The Frugal Gardener is a great book of gardening strategy for those of us who want to (or have to) stay within a small budget. As it turns out, the frugal way is also the organic way, generally.

TFG is organized to guide you through long-range strategies that will save you money in both short-term and long-term investments. An early chapter deals with the bare bones tools that you will need to start with; how to spot quality that will last, how to maintain them, and different uses for each. Next we learn how to plan a garden based on regional climates, making heavy use of naturalizing perennials and native plants that need less maintenance, watering and/or care (and so fewer products to buy). If you like the quick gratification of annuals, there are quite a few tips here that will help you maximize their impact in your garden. A great emphasis is placed on soil health, how to get it and how to increase it, thus saving more money that would have had to be wasted on expensive fertilizers and replacement plants. Then there are the recipes for homemade bug sprays and remedies that can be concocted from common household items.

TFG explained gardening organically in a way that made it easy and sensible even for me when I was first trying to make compost and wean away from chemical sprays. There is a lot that can be done to fortify and protect your plants and trees that will benefit them and the environment, and surprise! It's cheaper than chemical solutions. My garden has been thriving ever since.

Frugal gardeners, don't be afraid to spend the money on this book! Even if you only use a few of the many tips packed within this book, you will more than make up the cost of buying it in the long run.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

This book was given to me as a gift, and I truly love it. All of the information is useful at some time or another, a good reference point, and excellent for planning out the garden on a shoestring. Also recommend square foot gardening.

For me, a complete novice at gardening, this was a wonderful choice as one of my first two gardening books. Before digging up my front yard, I bought a Gardening-101-type book and this book, The Frugal Gardener. As it mentions in this book, it truly IS best to be frugal right from the beginning. You save the most, get exactly what you want for your dollar, and have a good idea of how to get what you need without spending a fortune. Useful tips throughout. I'd find it interesting even if I wasn't planning out my own garden. I highly recommend.

This is an excellent book for reference. I've come back to it time after time over the years.

My copy of Mr. Ogden's book is already dog-eared from use. Any gardener in the South who is interested in adding perennial bulbs to the garden must read this book. The information on every type of bulb, tuber or corm, including those of wild Southern heritage, is generous, well written and easy to understand. Garden Bulbs for the South is useful not only as a gardening reference but as a field classification manual when trying to identify that lily blooming at the old farmhouse down the road. After reading the chapter on rain lilies, I was finally able to determine what that tiny little lily growing wild in my front yard really is. Highly recommend.

Garden Bulbs for the South is simply a great book. The vast majority of books on bulbs deal extensively with Tulips, Grape Hyacinths, Daffodils and other cold climate bulbs and only give cursory information about warm climate bulbs and the information often pertains to container gardening. Every northerner moving South is tempted to try growing cold climate bulbs. Reading this book is both a delight and a time and money saver. It will also assist you in trying a lot of bulbs that you might otherwise overlook. It has been one of the most read books in my gardening library.

This is by far the absolute best book for those who garden in the steamy south! I have the first edition and snapped up the 2nd as soon as it came out. I definitely recommend this book. Scott Ogden blends history and horticultural requirements into something that is far more than just a good read!

Author Scott Ogden, a freelance garden writer and photographer, lives in New Braunfels, Texas, near San Antonio. That's considerably farther south than where I garden in Charlotte, NC, but nonetheless, I believe the book provides a helpful resource for "historic, neglected and little-known bulbs whose beauties belong rightly and traditionally to the South" (2). Ogden contends--and I am in full agreement--that for the "average home dirt dauber there are more rewarding activities" than planting, digging, refrigerating and re-planting bulbs. Says Ogden, "The effort and expense invested in temporary bulb displays might as readily be employed on something new, exotic, or extraordinary--even on flowers that like the South" (2). Ogden provides us with a list of more than 200 warm-climate bulbs. Now, that's worth a closer look!

Following discourse on the traits and differences between true bulbs, tubers, corms, rhizomes and tuberous roots, Ogden organizes this resourceful book into nine sections, featuring: Rain Lily Day; Petite Afrique: Winter Blooms; Jonquils and Kin; Spring Treasures; Irises, Gladioli, and Shellflowers; Crinums and Spider Lilies; Summer Glories; and lastly, Cannas, Arums, and Gingers. Next, in the Appendix, Ogden distinguishes between Southern bulb culture, Mediterranean beds and hog wallows. The author knows and respects clay soil, a bane of Piedmont gardening. (See also his book, Gardening Success with Difficult Soils.) Finally, after providing a review of garden bulbs for the South where full botanical names are provided, as well as family designations and cultivars, Ogden closes the book with a resource list where bulbs may be ordered and purchased.

Ogden's remarkable color pictures abound, providing grand illustrations to the printed text. The text is exceptionally and beautifully well-written, easy to read. Despite its appeal, not every word needs to be read in succession, making the book a valuable resource for a gardener's bookshelf when specific research is wanted and needed. Descriptions and advice abound, including how and where to plant, water and sun growing requirements, soil needs and amendments, and periods of bloom. Just as Ogden shares his recommendations for bulbs "for any need and any season," I can also recommend this inviting and handsome book.

Deborah Moore Clark
August 14, 2006

I borrowed this book from our local library and loved it so much that I wanted a copy of my own! This book is very easy to read and the projects are simple (supplies needed are mostly found in your kitchen).

I highly recommend this book.

This book is great for adult gardeners too- Not just kids! There are no kids in my household, but I have used this book as a reference ever since I started gardening (about 5 years ago). It has lots of useful and easy to read information about improving soil, planting, and caring for your garden plus tuns of inspiring and creative projects, most of which are just as fun for creative adults as children. Examples include making a seed caddy, hanging gift basket, cold frame, scarecrow, and vermicomposting bin, growing potatoes in tires, photographing your garden and much more. I recommend this book to all beginning gardeners.

One of the most enjoyable books I have found to do garden crafts with my children. Each of the projects were fun and easy to do. I would recommend this book to young and Old. I hope the author is working on another book. Her illustrations were great.

Not only is this a great resource for kids, but also for beginning gardeners like myself. I was getting buried by the information in other gardening books...complex soil testing, amending, feeding, etc. This book takes similar information and makes it understandable and makes the results seem achievable. The info given on easy-to-grow vegetables, easy-to-grow flowers, and, especially, the chart for diagnosing and solving growing problems are VERY helpful. I found this at the public library and MUST have it at home!

I was incredibly blessed to have stumbled across this book in our public library. It has become one of those rare additions to our home collection. For beginner gardeners, or even the seasoned, there is an abundance of helpful information within the covers. The pictures are beautiful and captivating for children. The craft ideas are inexpensive, fun, and very practical. Highly recommendo!!

Garden Lunacy: A Growing Concern is an utterly irreverent gardening book. Not intended as an instructional about raising plants or gardens (though the astute reader will acquire many tips on what not to do!), Garden Lunacy offers sharp-tongued wit and humor about the unique manner in which gardeners see the universe: plants first, humans last. Eccentric, covetous, even compulsive gardener traits are explored with a wink and a smile, sure to sound a sympathetic chuckle in plant lovers everywhere. A deftly amusing celebration of a widely beloved hobby and the people who embrace it.

As a non-gardener who hates plants (all they do is give me allergic reactions!) and has no interest in gardening, I was as eager to read this book as most youngsters are to eat their vegetables. But I gave it a try, and what a pleasant surprise!
The author, a reknowned horticulturist who has won many awards for his gardening talents, demonstrates an uncanny ability to accurately depict the neuroses of gardeners as seen through the eyes of non-gardeners like myself. Wolk's stories about his frantic escapades while competing at the Philadelphia Flower Show, his battles with the local animal life threatening his plants, and his obsessive yearning to build compost piles had both me and my non-gardening wife laughing out loud.
What I thought would be a laborious book to read turned out to be a real page-turner. This was a very entertaining, fun book.

It's been a long time since a book made me laugh out loud and this book does it over and over again. I found myself reading it aloud to my husband so that he would understand why I was giggling while reading a book on gardening. You don't have to even like plants to love this book. Art Wolk is the Dave Barry of the garden.

I've been attending the Philadelphia Flower Show for many years. From this day on, after finishing Garden Lunacy, I'll see the exhibits through an entirely different set of eyes. The way Art Wolk describes the frenzied pace and crazy antics associated with entering pots for judging in the flower show is hilarious.

Garden Lunacy is not a typical gardening book. The book is less about the plants, and more about the gardener, or as Art Wolk puts it 'the thing at the wooden end of the shovel'.

The name Art Wolk is perhaps familiar to many people, specifically those who attend the Philadelphia Flower Show. Art has won many Blue Ribbons at the show as well as Best in Show. However, he also has a very witty style of writing about his fellow gardening enthusiasts. Tales of travel problems in a late snowstorm with a car full of plants, an apartment overflowing with seedlings or plants, and a marijuana plant carefully being tended by a gardener in a public garden. These, and other logistical nightmares of the horticulturalist, fill the chapters. Of particular note is the area regarding a Gardener/Non-Gardener translation section that will help to clear up many of those misunderstood signals that pass between the two identities, not to mention bring a nod and a smile to many of us who have `been there, done that'. The book is indeed a wonderful remedy to help pass those rather tedious days of late winter when it is too early to dig, or the dog days of summer when it is too hot and humid to dig.

I HAVE GIVEN THIS BOOK TO FIVE LADIES IN MY LIFE AND THEY ALL LOVE IT. THE AUTHOR HAS FOUND A THEME/TRUTH THAT RESONATES AND SHE EXPOSES THAT TRUTH ARTFULLY AND PLEASINGLY.

In Garden Voices: Stories Of Women And Their Gardens is a compendium of twelve stories in which Carolyn Rap explores the relationships of women with their gardens, discovering that gardens can grow a lot more than flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Susan's garden led her from breast cancer back to health. Carol finds inspiration for her watercolors. Francie's garden transports her imagination to Elizabethan England. Judy's garden nourishes her friendships. Nancy's garden (which she shares with her husband) is an ongoing experiment to learn if men and women can find common ground. Garden Voices is especially commended to the attention of gardening enthusiasts as well as Women's Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

I'm vindicated. Thanks to GARDEN VOICES, there's a story to my passion to dig in the dirt. I found myself in the gardens of the women in GARDEN VOICES...and thoroughly enjoyed their company!
What a great gift for myself, for my friends.

I gave this as a gift to 3 ladies in my life and they loved it. Thank you Ms. Rapp.

My book group chose this book and it led to a rich discussion of what gardens mean in each of our lives. It is extremely well-written and each reader related to a different story. Our group usually reads fiction, and this book offered the opportunity for a refreshing change.

The Gardener's Guide to Cannas is a perfect place to start if you have any interest in one of the easiest plants to grow. The book covers everything you need to know, covers all the unique varities, and has wonderful pictures.

Detailed descriptions of Cannas including leaf and petal colors. Great color photos. Nice book!

I was very surprised at how much I learned about Cannas. I have approximately 40 different cannas. I learned more from reading the book than I have from raising cannas for the last 10 years. I also discovered some new ones that I plan on ordering.

Cannas are thought of in terms of their beautiful color. Ian Cooke's Gardener's Guide To Growing Cannas presents a canna expert's complete review of the plant, from an A-Z listing of varieties to the history of cannas, their cultivation and species, and cannas in the garden. Gardener's Guide To Growing Cannas is an appealing, colorful, comprehensive guide which gardeners and horticulturalists will appreciate.

This book deserves more than five stars! I had searched for a book on Cannas for a long time. As Ian Cooke points out, this book is the only comprehensive work published on Cannas since 1903. It has become one of my treasured plant bibles, along side with "Heliconia: An Identification Guide" by Fred Berry & W. John Kress and "Exotica" by Alfred Graf.

I live in the tropics and Cannas are indispensable in adding colours to an otherwise overpowering green garden. This book is aimed at gardeners in temperate climate countries, who have a more challenging task in growing Cannas. Ian Cooke is obviously an authority on these plants. The book has valuable information on Canna species, cultivation including common pests and diseases, and propagation by rhizome division and growing from seeds. There is even a list of websites/nurseries dedicated to this genus and is an alternative avenue for sourcing of new species by keen gardeners.

I bought this book since I'm just starting to plant different types of iris. The book provides a good overview and is an easy reference to understand. If I were a more experienced iris gardener I would probably be disappointed in the content covered.
Overall, would recommend for the gardener with little or no experience in planting iris.

This book is so easy to read, most iris books I have come across goes way to deep into botany that they are a bore to read, not to mention confusing. The pictures are beautiful. This book is definately for anyone wanting to grow irises.

My mother has found this book to be a very informative and helpful reference. When she started losing some of her plants to rot, the book explained what it was and how to treat it.

With fabulous photography by Roger Foley et al, this is an indispensable reference on irises for newcomers to these flags or old-times iris lovers. All the essential care needed for a spectacular display of these moving flowers. The Gardener's Iris Book is a wonderful way to learn how to tend your new crop of these amazing & historic plants. This is a book I've often re-read, the information I keep gleaning comes just at the right time. END

"The Gardener's Iris Book" describes itself as an introductory book for American gardeners. In my own experience, books about irises tend to fall into two categories: beautiful and fun to read, but not particularly useful or well-organized; and books that I can take out into the garden and actually use. This volume manages to straddle both categories, which is good because I like to look at beautiful pictures of irises, but I've also discovered that they are not particularly easy to grow. I've lost two complete plantings of Bearded Irises to borers, and even managed to kill off a bed of hardy Siberian irises.

Why bother with a touchy plant that has such a short growing season? That's easy: because they're one of the most beautiful flowers in the garden when they do bloom.

The author has a gift for clear, succinct phrasing, very well-suited for a 'how to' manual on growing irises. He also loves his subject--in the chapter on Louisiana Irises, he refers to himself as 'Johnny Iris Seed' because of his habit of planting his extra rhizomes in the mud at the margins of farm ponds, park pools, or even roadside ditches. "Most will establish themselves and give pleasure to passersby in years to come."

After forty years of growing irises, he has learned that a good garden springs from a healthy, living soil. He suggests using pesticides and commercial fertilizers only as a last resort. For instance, in the section on Iris borers, he starts with the least toxic methods for ridding your garden of these pests: carefully clean up your garden debris in late fall and early spring to limit the number of borers that will hatch. Monitor the young foliage fans for notches, then pinch the fan below the notches to squash any burrower (a mano a mano approach not recommended for the squeamish).

Irises can also be treated with beneficial nematodes. I tried this method one year with some success, although the neighbors probably wondered why I was running around with what looked like a horse hypodermic and sticking it into iris stems. According to this author, the nematodes can be sprayed on plants or used as a soil drench, so I can throw away my hypo.

"The Gardener's Iris Book" is fun to read straight through to the appendices on Iris specialist nurseries (listed by state), and iris books and computer resources. However the book is divided into sections that treat irises with similar growing characteristics, e.g. those requiring substantial moisture or those that thrive in dry conditions. These useful subdivisions allow the reader-in-a-hurry to concentrate on the irises that thrive in an environment most closely resembling his or her own garden.

There is humor and self-deprecation in The Gardener's Year...This is a book that will appeal to the gardener, the philospher, and the Zen deotee, the reader of self-help books, as well as the humorist. Here are quotes: "After his death, the gardener does not become a butterfly but ... a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous and spicey delights of the soil." "I find a real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers; he is a man who cultivates the soil". "The life of a gardener is active and full of will." There are easy references to German philosophers, campanula alpina, Tolstoy, the perfume of manure. All this is presented with humor but there are no fools in this book. It could easily be subtitled "Zen and the Pleasant Art of Gardening." It didn't change my life, but it made it better. For Godsake, by this book!

I don't know much about Czech literature, so I don't know if the Prague Spring had anything to do with the writing of Karel Capek, but I would not be surprised to discover a connection. "Leaves wither because spring is already beginning, because new buds are being made, as tiny percussion caps out of which the spring will crack....if we could only see that secret swarming of the future within us, we should say that our melancholy and distrust is silly and absurd and that the best thing of all is to be..living.."

Karel Capek wrote those words in 1929 when he was 39 years old. By 1938, the year the Nazis invaded Prague, he was dead. His brother Josef died a few years later in Bergan-Belsen. But this book is not about those sad events. This book is about a year in the life of a good gardener, how ever extraordinary a writer he might have been.

During his lifetime, Capek realized that humans were becoming enslaved by fascism and run-amuck technology. The ancient and cyclical daily practices of humans were dying before his eyes --the beet farmers stacking their fall harvests at the railroad stations; the wagon loads of manure that could be delivered for garden beds; the nursury men who understood plants giving way to "market garden centers" staffed by those who regularly misidentify plants and stocked with items that "move" (produce a high volume of sales).

THE GARDENER'S YEAR is a reflective book. You don't have to garden to appreciate it, but if you garden, you will probably laugh on more than one occasion. Where is the gardener who has not struggled with a hose; Who has not looked with greed on a bald spot and attempted to squeeze six more phlox plants in, only to discover a dormant sping plant; And, where is the gardener who has not wandered about the yard with a plant in each hand trying to find just one more place for a perennial. Capek understood the gardener's soul. We are a greedy lot, obsessed with dirt, happy in a wagon load of s___, and hostile to many-legged life forms, but, we are also the best sort of human beings who understand the meaning and importance of life.

Capek's writing reminds me of that of Henry Mitchell who wrote two columns (one on gardening the other on "everyday" philosophy) for the Washington Post. Like Mitchell Capek had the gift of converting his own gardening experiences into tales that inform, enlighten, and illustrate the best and the worst of human nature. "I tell you there is no death, not even sleep. We only pass from one season to another. We must be patient with life, for it is eternal."

I brought this as one of those suggested sells, you know the "people who brought blah blah blah also brought this book" . . . so I did. And boy am I glad I did! Karel Capek is a wonderful author who struck a resounding chord in the heart and soul of this gardener. It was not only wonderfully clever but inspired me to tend to my little rooted, green outdoor children and give them bushels of attention, care and compost ASAP!!! Loved it!

I bought this book for a friend, as a gift upon her achieving Master Gardener certification. I expected something a bit different, a bit more practical, perhaps, but after leafing through the pages, I read the entire book before I gave it to her. Written by the man known to most of us as a European author of the early 20th century on more weighty subjects, this man's witty description of himself as the sometimes manic master of his small domestic garden both amuses and somehow comforts those of us who share his enthusiasm. I laughed long and loudly at Capek's description of what ensued from his planting of the seeds from just one packet, at the many dozens of little plants in little pots, all of which became bigger and bigger, and had to be taken outdoors, finally, to find places in a tiny garden patch. This is a short book, with short chapters, just right for picking up in odd moments during the winter months when we are only dreaming about the coming of gardening season once again.

This is the best book about gardeners I know of. With grace and humor, this book delightfully explores the glories and foibles of serious amateur gardeners. Any garden nut who reads this book without laughing and almost crying over this inciteful outing of the gardener's soul is a callous person indeed.

I am actually not done with this book yet but am thoroughly enjoying it. I would think that only a dedicated, avid gardener would like this book. I, too, am obsessed with my gardens - which are still young (2 years) and I am quite impatient for improvement and growth. So, I can completely relate to the experiences this author went through. I actually take comfort in reading it and come out the other end with great hopes! It is very inspiring from a garden design standpoint and helps one realize that the sweating, aching back, itchy bug bites, and dirty finger nails are all worth it in the end. There is also subtle humor within. I only wish that there were photographs of all the gardens discussed - unless the point was for the reader to picture them in their mind's eye?

The essays and stories that make up Gardening at Ginger are about things like greenness (the color, not the movement), the author's city-born-and-bred wife's reaction to insects that get indoors (not hospitable) and where to place a bench. James Raimes' writing is by turns personable, erudite, witty and earnest, and his book goes a long way toward explaining why gardening, an activity that regularly leaves its practitioners filthy, pooped and bleeding, also makes them so happy.

Seven years ago the author and his wife bought a country home on nine acres in upstate New York, calling it 'Ginger' and evoking in him a desire to learn about plants and gardening. Raimes grew up in England, so his instinct in this area was always there: his desire to shape a landscape proved challenging, however, and GARDENING AT GINGER: MY SEVEN-YEAR OBSESSION WITH DESIGNING AND PLANTING A PERSONAL LANDSCAPE reviews his efforts, achievements and failures alike. A vivid memoir of the 'gardening bug' involves all.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

What an amazing and enchanting book! So different from the run of the mill "how to". The author shares his plans, dreams, hopes, experiences with the reader. (After completing the chapter on Digging in Clay, I was so exhausted that I needed a lie down to recover.) Please can we have a sequel or at least a blog with photos and maps. I want to see it all.

Raimes' recounting of his "growing" obsession is subtle, graceful and altogether involving. He includes lots of background from his English childhood, gardening experts he's consulted and absorbed, his sometimes bemused wife who nevertheless stands by his often backbreaking, daylight hour devouring transformation of a landscape into areas of inviting woods, stonework, flower beds, greensward, specimen trees and water. It made me stop and think in a new way about my own gardening and enriched my understanding of what all gardeners do.