Homekeeper's Library: Gardening Books

As befits the weekend between the Equinox and Easter, it's sunny but cold in Astoria today.  In this neighborhood known for its urban gardens, the flowers know what time of year it is.  The determined purple heads of crocuses have weathered the extremes of two blizzards and a weekend so warm that many of our neighbors broke out their grills.  After weeks of poking green stalks towards lengthening rays of sunshine, daffodils and buttercups are unfurling.  Magnolia trees and dogwoods, somehow discordant this far north of the Mason/Dixon line, are in bud, as is the hollyhock outside my office window.  Palm fronds will proliferate tomorrow, and in a week, so will Easter lilies.

Everywhere from the home center to the grocery store, pallets of spring plants are being transferred into the eager hands of gardeners ready for the urban version of spring planting.  Whether it's a plot of front yard smaller than many front porches, a deck or a rooftop or a fire escape or a sunny windowsill, city dwellers are not immune to the expression of spring fever that involves tending plants already in the household while welcoming some new growth. In honor of spring planting wherever you are, here are some of my favorite books on gardening.

Space is a consideration for many gardeners, and along with such wonderful programs as community gardens, the common solution is container gardening.  The best book I've found (for the record, was gifted with: thanks, Ann) is Rose McGee and Maggie Stuckey's The Bountiful Container. This books speaks to the specific needs of the container gardener and that gardener's little green charges.  The book offers a solid foundation of information on selecting and caring for container-friendly plants, along with creative and easily accomplished ideas and directions for maximizing the experience.  This year, how about planting a strawberry pot, an herbal tea garden, or a Victorian window box?  Like phlox, Better Homes and Garden's Container Gardens covers the same ground, with ideas and directions for the container gardener, and four-color photography that is inspirating in its own right.

I love exotic plants (that's Betsy, one of my windowsill wormwoods, posing with the books up top), so I am the target audience for Black Plants.  This small but beautiful volume covers plants in black from basic to sophisticated to sinister and in no colors of the rainbow in between (well, a few; some scarlet and chocolate plants did sneak in).  The book provides a marvelous opportuntiy to learn about plants with black leaves, flowers, brachts, tendrils, stalks, foliage and/or reputation -- how could I or anyone resist a book that includes bat flowers?  Like any plant, your ability to care for these plants will depend on your climate, disposition and skill level, but I've rarely encountered a book so full of beauties that will make you want to try.

I would be untrue to my roots as a transplanted westerner if I didn't grown cacti.  Among the numerous books about cacti and succulents, my favorite is Sunset's Cactus & Succulents.  This slim but potent volume tells the cactus gardener everything they need to know to create a commodious atmosphere for their prickly, somewhat finicky charges, from a solid glossary of the varieties of plants to care instructions to a very good RX section for ailing plants.  Specialty gardeners of the opposite extreme will appreciate Philip Swindell's Container Water Gardens, which explains these plants by variety and the special needs of their care, as well as offering good ideas for display.  Ask your used bookseller to scout a copy for you; you'll need it, as I did, when you succumb, as I did, to the water lily bulbs that appear in home and garden centers this time of year.

Better Homes and Gardens encyclopedic New Complete Guide to Gardening is the comprehensive resource for the home gardener.  The first part of the book discusses home landscaping in an understandable and useable way; the second part of the book is a comprehensive plant encyclopedia on every kind of planting from vegetables to roses.  Whatever kind of ground you're covering, this book will help you keep it producing beautiful, healthy plants throughout the year.

Finally, after you've scrubbed your fingernails at the end of the day, why not curl up with a cozy mystery?  I've been devouring Susan Witting Albert's China Bayles Herbal Mysteries for fifteen years.  Albert's talented writing and knowledge about and love for these "useful plants" shine through the pages, but the stories are engrossing even if you've never so much as touched a trowel.  Susan and China are among of the reasons why I'm a writer, and are why I haven't touched on herbs in this post.  I simply don't know as much as these Albert and Bayles do.