In the days leading up to the holidays, on-line booksellers make it convenient, and sometimes economical, to take advantage of their services. Look for free shipping, expedited shipping, gift-wrapping, and good buys on gift certificates.
Most gardeners rely on books packed full of critical and idea-provoking information. A carefully chosen up-to-date book or gift certificate delights even the most hard to please. Here are five horticulture books that demonstrate current offerings:
Garden Design Books
- Gardening with Shape, Line and Texture: A Plant Design Sourcebook, 2009, Timber Press, Portland, OR 9720, written by British landscape designer Linden Hawthorne, links traditional garden design books and plant encyclopedias. Hawthorne emphasizes plant shape in landscape design and uses color as a minor design factor. Part 1 examines how principles of art apply to plant arrangement. The author also looks at fundamental plant shapes and how they affect finished landscape designs. Part 2 is a resource of plants alphabetically listed within each plant shape category.
- Gorgeous Garden Railways, 2006, Kalmbach Publishers, Waukesha, WI 53187 by founder and editor of Garden Railways magazine Marc Horovitz and horticultural editor of Garden Railways Pat Hayward. This is not a how-do-it but is according to the publishers ” a table top photo book about some very good looking garden railroads.” Railway gardening combines model railroading and designed gardening. Rather than just a collection of garden photos, the book is a practical inspiration for landscape gardeners intrigued by adding scale-model railroads to parts of their garden designs. Gorgeous Garden Railways is a paperback measuring 10″ x 10″ in size includes over 130 photographs on high quality paper.
- The Well-Designed Mixed Garden: Building Beds and Borders with Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Annuals, and Bulbs by garden designer, writer and speaker Tracy DiSabato-Aust, now in paperback (2009), follows the well-received hardcover edition. This format joins DiSabato-Aust’s 50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants and The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques also produced by Timber Press. This book contains chapters on color theory, plant sizes and spacing, plant maintenance, and instructions on plan construction. DiSabato-Aust uses examples from her own garden as well as other American Midwest locations; however, they are all valid for other locales. There is a section of plant combinations that are illustrated and then deconstructed, with explanations of why the groupings work. This book is meticulously researched and precisely organized. It is a learning tool for newcomers to landscape design and a versatile reference for veteran landscape gardeners.
Tree Books
- The 6th edition of Michael A. Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Ornamental Characteristics, Culture, Propagation and Uses, 2009, Stipes Publishing, Champaign, IL, 61820, is now available in both hardcover and paper. Dirr, University of GA horticulture professor emeritus, includes in this long-awaited edition taxonomic verifications using the GRIN taxonomic data base (germplasm resources information network); the addition of over 2,000 new species and cultivars, trademark names and patent numbers, and expanded descriptions. This edition includes notes and observations from Dirr’s 1999 sabbatical to England’s Hillier Arboretum and 112 gardens and nurseries. The Chronicle of Higher Education calls this major revision ‚”A Horticulture Bible.” It is an expensive but thoughtful gift for discerning landscape gardeners.
Flower Books
- Allan M. Armitage’s 3rd edition of Herbaceous Perennial Plants: A Treatise on Their Identification Culture, and Garden Attributes (2008), Stipes Publishing, available in hardcover and paper, joins his other books published by Timber Press and Stipes Publishing Co. ‚”The Big Perennial Book” is how many perennial plant enthusiasts refer to this latest edition. It includes dozens of new genera, 3,600 species and hundreds of new cultivars that did not exist in 1997 and up-to-date taxonomic changes in over 1100 pages. This edition includes Armitage-style observations of plant performance, cultivar selection and current taxonomy, and color photos and line illustrations throughout the text. The American Horticulture Society designated Armitage’s first edition of Herbaceous Perennial Plants: A Treatise on Their Identification Culture, and Garden Attributes as “one of the best 75 books written in the last 75 years.” The third edition continues Armitage’s high standards and gives the impression of being an even better problem-solving and inspirational tool for landscape gardeners!