The Southern Garden
by Lydia Longshore with the Editors of Southern Accents (Bulfinch
Press Book, Little, Brown and Company)
Author Longshore is
an editor with Southern Accents, a magazine about southern
interior design, lifestyle, and garden. For this book, she and
her co-editors at the magazine reach out to a broader audience
with glimpses of the designs of several southern gardens. The
result is a good idea book. The garden design photos should prove
useful to any gardener wanting to expand the house into the garden
with outdoor living space, something Southern gardeners have a
lot of experience with.
The gardens featured
are not typical; they're upscale properties and estates whose
owners most likely employ gardeners. Geographically the gardens
range from Maryland to Florida and Texas, an amazing testament
to the breath and depth of what's considering the South. That
encompasses five gardening zones whose low temperatures range
from 0°F to 40°F. The gardens include a variety of styles, from
tropical flowering, formal parterre, to a working farm.
The author takes us
on a tour of the gardens, chapter by chapter, focusing on various
styles and elements (formal, cottage, water features, ornamentation,
etc.) relying on beautiful photos and a brief narrative.
Between tours, you
can expect information on such topics as garden design principles,
the pros and cons of lawns, and water conservation. Don't expect
how-to-grow or much in the way of photo IDs for plants. In fact,
most photo captions don't identify plants in them and two that
did were inaccurate (one mistook an alocasia leaf for a banana;
another, a begonia for a euphorbia).
Chicken Soup for
the Gardener's Soul 101 Stories to Sow Seeds of Love, Hope and
Laughter
by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Cynthia Brian, Cindy Buck,
Marion Owen, Pat Stone, Carol Sturgulewski (Health Communications,
Inc.)
As I opened this book,
I had low expectations. After all, there are almost as many Chicken
Soups out there as there are Dummie books. How good
could it be? Like the other Chicken Soup books, it's a
collection of stories by celebrity-gardeners and real-life gardeners.
With an audible sigh, I started in the middle with Love in
Bloom and read a few essays, then flipped to the beginning
to Joy of Gardening, where I read one right after another
into the wee hours of the night.
The stories are poignant
and earnest, humorous and sad, and all are straight from the heart.
They made me laugh and sniffle and smile. Each story was a different
personal tale but each was about the rewards of gardening and
the lessons learned therein. Some are plucked right out of history—a
Vietnam vet venting his anger by talking to his garden plants
or a gardener who took care of the rose nursery of a Japanese-American
neighbor interned during the War.
Other stories are tied
to loved ones now gone or memories of special times: an ivy slip
from a bridal bouquet that is rooted and passed down to other
generations; a daffodil planting that survived the gardener; a
stray cat that inspired a family to cultivate a vacant lot as
a wildlife sanctuary.
Sunbelt Gardening
Success in Hot Weather Climates
by Tom Peace (Fulcrum Publishing)
Like most gardens and
gardeners, this book and author are ambitious: "Learn the art
and science of creating spectacular hot-climate gardens coast
to coast with year-round beauty." What is accomplished is a useful
and knowledgeable introduction to exotic and tropical plants at
a time when gardeners on both sides of the sunbelt are experimenting
with the sizzling colors and arresting shapes of exotics.
The book describes
many uncommon plants as well as unusual varieties of common plants.
Peace frequently suggests companion plants that co-exist aesthetically
and culturally. His knowledge about heat-lovers and their use
in the landscape is evident in the advice and information he shares.
The first part of
the book is about cool-season gardening, with the author encouraging
those of us in warm-temperature zones to take better advantage
of two-season gardening. The second part focuses on hot and humid
growing conditions and the third, hot and arid growing conditions.
In each section, Peace uses the tools of botany and taxonomy to
help us understand what plants need to flourish in those particular
growing conditions. The author's does so occasionally with humor:
"Whenever I see queen palms growing, I must resist the overwhelming
temptation to declare a holiday and order refreshing, fruity rum
drinks with umbrellas in them while I relax in the shade".
Dogs in their
Gardens
by Page Dickey (Stewart, Tabori & Chang)
This small coffee-table
book contains plenty of fetching photographs of purebreds and
mutts. Sometimes they're caught lounging or romping in famous
gardens or with famous gardeners (Vita-Sackville West with her
Alsatian, Edit Wharton with her Pekingese, Lawrence Johnston's
dachshunds at Hidcote.) The text takes us on quick tours of a
wide range of European and American gardens, introducing us briefly
to their gardeners and showing us their furry friends making themselves
at home.
Six-Legged Sex:
The Erotic Lives of Bugs
by James K. Wangberg (Fulcrum)
Wangberg. a professor
of entomology, ventures into the world of publishing to share
in layperson's terms some of the lesser-known information about
insect behavior. Obviously enjoying himself, the author exposes
the weird and unusual sexual insect behavior that is buried in
scientific literature. Explaining it in human terms, he mixes
in love, lust, and heartbreak to create personalities and relationships
akin to mini-soap operas, but X-rated, of course.
