Book Reviews

Small Space Container Gardens by Fern Richardson

March 30, 2012 98 comments
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Longtime readers will know I’ve been a fan of Fern’s stylish blog Life on the Balcony for some time. Fern’s like an approachable version of Martha Stewart for container gardeners – while her photos and ideas are gorgeously inspiring, her projects are never so difficult or time-consuming that I feel I couldn’t possibly fit them [...]

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The NEW Sunset Western Garden Book

March 22, 2012 65 comments
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16 years ago, when I took my first horticulture class, The Sunset Western Garden Book was the very first book I bought. Its status in the West is such that I owned three copies by the end of my first year: one old edition which had the best basic gardening tips, one new edition with [...]

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The Chicken Encyclopedia by Gail Damerow

March 18, 2012 48 comments
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I grew up a big-city gal, so when I moved to Humboldt County to go to college, I was amazed to find a field of cows just outside the backyard of my apartment complex. Passing by each day, I’d watch them grazing with an odd sense of unreality. Cows! Right there in town! With their [...]

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Free-Range Chicken Gardens by Jessi Bloom

February 28, 2012 75 comments
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Jessi Bloom‘s new book Free-Range Chicken Gardens seems sure to be a new bestseller, because while the backyard-chicken trend has taken off, nobody has really stepped up to offer guidance on some of the issues common to owners of free-ranging hens, until now. In just four years of keeping my own tiny flock, I’ve had [...]

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Book Review: The Beginner’s Guide to Gardening

February 15, 2012 91 comments
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Katie Elzer-Peters is one of those dynamos of the gardening world who is so busy Getting Things Done that you may not have actually heard of her yet. But she’s been working behind the scenes on so many projects – nursery newsletters, writing articles for sites too numerous to mention, and mentoring authors with Cool [...]

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Dirr’s Encyclopedia a New Industry Standard

November 29, 2011 5 comments
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***Timber Press is holding a giveaway for the new Dirr book! Details below.*** The internet has removed the need for so many types of book. Between the online nursery descriptions and search engine image searches, you can find basic information on many types of plant, and that’s often good enough. However, things become tricky when [...]

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The Visitor’s Guide to American Gardens

November 21, 2011 43 comments
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If your winter “gardening” is usually comprised of bulb and perennial catalogs, highlighters, and very little in the way of actual outdoor gardening, then I have a new tool to make your winter plotting that much more exciting. Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp has written The Visitor’s Guide to American Gardens, which is a beautifully-organized and [...]

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50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants

August 24, 2011 20 comments
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EDIT: Patrick is the winner of the giveaway! You all remember my excitement recently to have discovered this lovely new book from Timber Press. Ruth Rogers Clausen shows off 50 top picks for deer-resistant gardens, and gives about two pages of in-depth information about how to design with each plant, what other plants look best [...]

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Deer Resistant Gardening Made Easy: a Book Review

July 12, 2011 4 comments
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Ruth Rogers Clausen, author of 50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants, has some straightforward advice for dealing with deer, and selecting beautiful plants that will go well together in deer country. I share some of her advice for dealing with deer over at the Christian Science Monitor, and give an in-depth review of her new book there [...]

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Wicked Bugs: Video Interview with Amy Stewart

June 2, 2011 2 comments
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I am adoring Wicked Bugs, the latest from author Amy Stewart. She’s back with more deliciously morbid musings, this time about the insects, spiders, and squirmy things that have us so outnumbered that for each one of us, there are two hundred million of them. Eeep! While Amy’s a huge fan of bugs, she didn’t [...]

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