In recent years container gardening has become my main source of bright colorful annuals in the garden. I’ve come to enjoy the versatility and creative opportunity that containers provide. It followed that I would pick up some books to further inspire creating containers with interesting plant combinations. The result is several to review for readers here.

The surprise was how much the gardener can get from what might at first seem very specific books for a small niche of readers. Yet, because filling a container with plants is something like a microcosm of creating a larger garden, many of the lessons gleaned from a good book on this topic can be transferred into general garden planning. and while some books are always better than others, the container gardening books were particularly rich in exciting and creatively stimulating photographs.

Upcoming reviews include…

I handled the decorating and flowers for my daughter’s wedding. Jotting down just a few notes on resource and how-to books for anyone who wants to tackle this important task.

Two of the most helpful books for creating wedding flower arrangements I would like to recommend ( and I researched numerous ones -along with all the Bridal magazines) are Malcolm Hilliers “Book of Fresh Flowers“, and Wedding Flowers Made Simpleby Steven Roberts. These two books were especially elegant, artfully illustrated, and replete with all the basic instructions an amateur like me needed. I had worked with silk and dried, but had not worked with trying to make a professional result in fresh floral arrangements. These books gave me confidence, they gave me ideas, and they gave me lots of pictures!

Gardening with Prairie Plants: How to Create Beautiful Native Landscapes
by Sally Wasowski

While in the library I picked up a copy of this book… I was in the middle of writing about prairie gardens as a style, and so it caught my interest. Little did I realize what a gem of a garden book I had happened upon. Literate, expert, and easy to apply, I think any gardener would benefit from having this book on their shelves. After all, don’t many of us grow coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and experiment with grasses, already?

New Garden Design, Inspiring Private Paradises

by Zahid Sardor and Marion Brenner

This book was written for and about Californian gardens, especially those in Northern California. I’ll tell you that, right off the top. This is not to say that gardeners from other locales can take nothing away from reading this book, because there are components of it that transcend place, but by and large it will have little that Midwestern or Northeastern gardeners may utilize for their own, directly.

It is an artistic book, with large well-done photographs, masterful plant combinations and sculptural details both in hardscaping and garden placed art objects. For all gardeners there are inspirations in situating sculpture in the garden, giving sense of place, flights of whimsy, and creating your own stamp on your landscape. The landscapes are those around San Francisco for the most part, with the plant material that grows perfectly in those environs: lavender, olive trees, succulents. It also features those all-season outdoor spaces that California is famous for. For those who can’t grow those plant materials, spend half their year with inclement weather, and do not have vineyards or mountains in their borrowed views, a lot of interpretation is in store.

The Kitchen Garden, A Practical Guide to Planning & Planting

This book from the Wayside Gardens Collection belongs on the shelves of those who decide they must have a Kitchen Garden as part of their landscape. While some books of this type (such as ‘Herbs‘ by Emelie Tolley and Chris Mead) hybrid recipes and food related chapters with garden information, Andi Clevely’s ‘The Kitchen Garden‘ is one book that actually sticks to the gardening aspect of growing food for the kitchen. Kitchen gardens are a bit different from the usual veggie patch and Clevely’s book well illustrates that fact. In fact, the illustrations are a real asset of owning this book!