Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars

Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars: Grandma's Bag of Tricks
by Sharon Lovejoy

205 pages
Workman Publishing, February 4, 2010
List price: $14.95





Sharon Lovejoy has done it again.  The award-winning and bestselling author of Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, Trowel & Error, and Sunflower Houses: Inspiration from the Garden, has given us yet another idea-filled scrapbook of projects that grandparents, parents, caregivers, and siblings can use to make learning an adventure and an experience your favorite young person will remember forever.

Just a few examples:

• Make a time capsule to bury in the garden
• Find the "bunny" inside a peanut
• Make a caterpillar of cucumbers and carrots - then eat it!
• Make a pinecone feeder for the birds
• Play with the faeries

This is a delightfully illustrated (by Lovejoy) treasure trove of memory makers, with 130 ideas for doing just that.  Some are clearly better experienced with a child, but I found more than few that can be done without help from anyone.

The next time I buy a fresh pineapple from the grocery, the top of it is going to sit atop a jar of water for rooting, instead of going into the trash or compost pile.  And what about the toad cottages mentioned in the title? I've always wanted one of those.

Thanks, Grandma Lovejoy, for showing us the way.

Sharon Lovejoy is an author, illustrator, lecturer, and teacher, and the children's garden adviser to the American Horticultural Society. She has been a guest on Today at NBC, PBS's Victory Garden, and the Discovery Channel, and speaks at educational conferences and gardening organizations around the country. She has four grandchildren and divides her time between California and Maine. Her website is www.sharonlovejoy.com and she writes a blog at sharonlovejoy.blogspot.com.

__________________
The publication being reviewed in this blog post was the sole compensation for reviewing the product. All opinions expressed here are mine. If I like it, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll say that, too.

Succulent Container Gardens

Succulent Container Gardens: Design Eye-Catching Displays with 350 Easy-Care Plants
by Debra Lee Baldwin

248 pages
Timber Press, January 20, 2010
List price: $29.95





I've  anticipated the arrival of this book for a couple of months now and when it finally arrived, I was nearly giddy with glee.  Having recently developed an appetite for succulents, this really hit the spot.  Baldwin shares her vast knowledge of succulents of all types with the rest of us in a very organized and easy-to-understand way.
 
This is a how-to manual of the best kind, with chapters on the various types of succulents and how to care for them. Site-specific details help readers choose those plants that will bring them the most success in their particular climate or indoor location.  More than 300 color photographs give ideas for container plantings. I particularly like the section showing vertical displays.

Watch the trailer:

It's evident that Baldwin has a heart for her subject and she uses her artistic talents to present them in wonderful ways that aid us in displaying our own burgeoning collections. What? You don't have a succulent collection?  I dare you to read this book and resist buying a plant or two. Or three or four or five.

Debra Lee Baldwin is an award-winning writer and editor based in Southern California. Throughout her 18-year career, she has authored an inspirational biography, and has written hundreds of feature articles and columns about architecture, homes, gardens, landscaping and interior design, and people who have made significant contributions to our culture. Debra has won awards from the Garden Writers Association of America, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the San Diego Press Club, and has appeared on national television.

Debra is also the author of Designing With Succulents. You may also be interested in the author's own Web sites, www.DebraLeeBaldwin.com and www.succulentchic.net.

__________________
The publication being reviewed in this blog post was the sole compensation for reviewing the product. All opinions expressed here are mine. If I like it, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll say that, too.

Waking Up in Eden

Waking Up in Eden
by Lucinda Fleeson

310 pages
Algonquin Books, 2009
List price: $13.95




Give Ms. Fleeson credit.  She took a chance on life, leaving her job as a newspaper journalist in Philadelphia, for a position in Hawaii, helping to transform botanic gardens on the "garden island" of Kauai into the gems they were meant to be.  Offered the job by her friend and colleague Bill Klein, her venture into the world of fast-disappearing native flora changed her life.

I found her account of her work there to be fascinating in a botanical sort of way and I was left with greater knowledge of the fragility of native ecosystems.  Fleeson is a good writer, as one might expect, but it wasn't the most engaging read I've had in recent months.  As my three-star rating says, it's worth a look, but not likely one you'd require for your permanent library.

Lucinda Fleeson is director of the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. A reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer for many years, she has received an Arthur Rouse Award for Press Criticism, a McGee Journalism Fellowship in Southern Africa, a Knight International Press Fellowship, and a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard.  Before settling in Washington, D.C., she lived in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Budapest, Botswana, and most notably, Kauai.

__________________
The publication being reviewed in this blog post was the sole compensation for reviewing the product. All opinions expressed here are mine. If I like it, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll say that, too.

Daffodils / Tulips For North American Garden

Daffodils for North American Gardens
Tulips for North American Gardens
by Brent and Becky Heath

144 pages / 144 pages
bright sky press, 2001
List price: $24.95 / $24.95

The next best thing to seeing tulips and daffodils come up in  your garden is leafing through the pages of companion volumes Daffodils For North American Gardens and Tulips For North American Gardens by bulb gurus, Brent and Becky Heath.

Each book is written using the same menu, which delivers a multi-course gourmet meal of the delicious world of daffodils and tulips. Starting off with botanical information and moving on to growing tips and cultivation, these whet the appetite for the main course.

Suggestions for which bulbs grow best in particular regions of North America and what to plant with them are provided.  Forcing and hybridizing are given their due as well as information about arranging and showing them.

And then comes dessert!  Page after page of each type of each bulb - with pictures - sent me running for paper and pencil to make my list of wants.  It probably doesn't help that it's the middle of winter and I'm longing to see daffodils and tulips in my own gardens, but the list gets unrealistically long and I head over to their online store to see if they have what I'm drooling over.

Yes, that's right, the authors of these books know whereof they speak when it comes to daffodils and tulips. They're the owners of Brent and Becky's Bulbs, the internationally known bulb farm in Gloucester, Virginia, where they have provided individuals and businesses with the best in bulbs for over 30 years.

Buy one or buy both - they're worthy reference books in any gardener's library.

_______________________________
*Books reviewed were purchased by the reviewer.

The Gardener's Color Palette

The Gardener's Color Palette: Paint Your Garden with 100 Extraordinary Flower Choices
by Tom Fischer

236 pages
Timber Press, February 15, 2010
List price:  $12.95





The title is intriguing, and while the cover idea is clever, there is something about it that doesn't actually draw me in.  If I were to see it in a bookstore, I'm not entirely sure I'd pick it up and have a look, and that would be a shame, because what is contained within its covers made me want to sit right down with it and read the whole thing in one sitting.

So I did.

The Gardener's Color Palette comes on the heels of Black Plants and is done in much the same format.  In this one, 100 plants are featured and are presented in color groups, ten to a group.  The photography is visually stunning, and if nothing else, inspires me to do some serious shutterbugging of my own flowers.

Each flower has its own two pages, one for its photo and the other to tell all about its character.  Basics listed are:

• Latin name
• Common name
• Pronunciation of the Latin name
• Plant type
• Height and spread
• Bloom time
• USDA Hardiness Zone

If it's a North American native, that is noted as well.  Easy-to-understand symbols show light and moisture requirements.  In the descriptive paragraph that follows, growing advice is given and on occasion, Fischer offers suggestions as to where the plant may be sourced.

At $12.95, the 7-inch by 7-inch softcover book is priced right for providing inspiration for those gardeners that want eye-catchers in their flower beds.  Though touting that the plants are some of the best to be grown in a wide variety of climates, Fischer still succeeded in teasing me with several that gave me that bane of all gardeners - zone envy.

On the other hand, I'm already growing many of the plants in this book and as I read the information presented about them, I can personally vouch for the author's knowledge of his subject matter.  This is a delicious little book that arrives just in time for spring planning.

Tom Fischer is editor-in-chief of Timber Press. Before moving to Portland, Oregon, in 2004, he was the editor of Horticulture magazine in Boston, Massachusetts. His experiences as a bi-coastal gardener and his inexhaustible curiosity about plants have both shaped his new garden, which in 2008 was profiled in the Oregonian. A prolific writer as well as an editor, his articles have been featured in magazines such as Garden Design, Gardens Illustrated, and Martha Stewart Living.


_________________
The publication being reviewed in this blog post was the sole compensation for reviewing the product. All opinions expressed here are mine. If I like it, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll say that, too.