Books

Book Review of Lavender: The Grower’s Guide by Virginia McNaughton

August 27, 2010
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Lavender: The Grower’s Guide is a thorough and easy-to-use encyclopedia of the lavender varieties most common in production today. Virginia McNaughton begins the book strongly by discussing how to grow lavender, how to prune it, the special requirements of lavenders, which ones grow well in containers, and the pests and diseases that can strike lavender [...]

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The Little-Known Favorites of a True Gardener: Books From an Estate Sale

June 27, 2010
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This morning I took my mom to an estate sale I saw advertised locally. (An estate sale, for those of you not familiar with the lingo, is a sale of someone’s possessions after they’ve died.) I find them heartbreaking and fascinating and delightful all at once. We put so much of our hopes and dreams [...]

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Review of The Nonstop Garden by Stephanie Cohen and Jennifer Benner

May 29, 2010
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Is the word “garden” a noun or a verb? If much of the joy you take in your garden is that you get to play, experiment, fiddle, and tend to it, then this is the book for you. Stephanie Cohen has put together a thoughtful design primer for gardeners who love to garden, and want [...]

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Book Review: The NEW Low-Maintenance Garden by Valerie Easton

April 24, 2010
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You’d think that a landscape designer who also does landscape maintenance would be dismissive of the whole low-maintenance gardening thing. After all, there’s a negative impression of low-maintenance gardens as being dull, static, lifeless places devoid of wildlife or any personal character. But there is a balance in a well-designed garden between hardscape (the patios, [...]

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Heather and Heath Fans: Free E-Books from the Heather Society!

April 21, 2010
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Besides the Timber Press book Gardening with Hardy Heathers by Wulff and Small, my favorite heather resources have been two slender booklets published by the International Heather Society and given to me by our local Heather guru Maria Krenek. The books are about how to care for and grow heathers successfully, and which heathers they [...]

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Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants Talk at Arcata’s Northtown Books

August 26, 2009
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I had a blast recently seeing Amy Stewart speak in person at our local bookstore about her book, Wicked Plants. I’d seen her previously at our local garden show, but this was even cooler because the bookstore owner provided some wicked drinks for us all – gin and tonics using a fancy tonic water with [...]

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Wicked Plants Book Review (Video with Amy Stewart) Plus a Look Inside the Author’s Wicked Plants Garden

August 3, 2009
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I’m a huge fan of Amy Stewart, and I’ve read everything she’s written, including her bimonthly gardening column in our local newspaper and her writing at Garden Rant, so I was thrilled when I heard about her latest book, Wicked Plants. I’m a professional gardener and a total plant geek, so reading all about the [...]

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The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart: Video Book Review

July 5, 2009
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OK, so this isn’t strictly gardening, but all ya’ll should know by now what a rabid fan of Amy Stewart I am. I love her writing on Garden Rant, I love Wicked Plants and the rest of her non-fiction books, and I love her chicken paintings. So when I heard she had released her new [...]

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Wicked Plants Contest Winner!

May 25, 2009

All right Amy Stewart fans, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for – the winner of the autographed copy of Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants is: Monica the Garden Faerie! Monica, I’ll be emailing you today to find out where to send your book! While the drawing itself was random (I had my Memorial Day [...]

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Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants Book has Arrived! (with Video and a Contest!)

May 11, 2009

Read to the end of the article to find out how you can win an autographed copy of Wicked Plants! Y’all know by now what a huge fan I am of Amy Stewart and her writing. As a plant geek, I love how accurate she is about the plants’ details (so many writers get basic [...]

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