Written by Lynn Felici-Gallant
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Handmade Garden Projects, Step-by-Step Instructions for Creative Garden Features, Containers, Lighting & More by Lorene Edwards Forkner (Timber Press, 2011)
It is impossible to know which came first—the latest garden trend of repurposing everyday household items into works of garden art or Lorene Edwards Forkner’s book, Handmade Garden Projects, Step-by-Step Instructions for Creative Garden Features, Containers, Lighting & More. In either case, Forkner captures the spirit of the new movement beautifully in her timely compilation of do-it-yourself (DIY) garden projects. From gabion-style...
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Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Buffer It! JoomShareBar An Invitation to the Garden: Seasonal Outdoor Entertaining by Michael Devine (Rizzoli, 2014)
Textile designer Michael Devine’s guide, An Invitation to the Garden, contains more than enough ideas for entertaining in the garden any time of year. From brunches and buffets to dinners and drinks, the book features 12 different themed parties, appropriate for intimate gatherings of around eight guests.
Captured through beautiful photography, Devine’s garden parties evoke elegant French flair, and his inspiration stems from whatever is currently growing in his...
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Buffer It! JoomShareBar Harvest Maine: Autumn Traditions & Fall Flavors by Crystal Ward Kent
(American Palate, 2014)
If WMUR TV’s storyteller Fritz Wetherbee could sit next to you on a porch and narrate all that happens in autumn in Maine, the result would be something like Harvest Maine: Autumn Traditions & Fall Flavors by Crystal Ward Kent. Covering the highlights of this season, including the country fair, a pumpkin festival, a traditional hunter’s breakfast, an apple farmer making cider, and stories of a lovesick moose...
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Buffer It! JoomShareBar Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi (Adams Media, 2013)
Non-geeks, take heart: writer, blogger, and teacher Christy Wilhelmi’s book, Gardening for Geeks, might actually be for you. Behind the graph and formula decorating the front cover, Wilhelmi offers a comprehensive and accessible guide to starting and succeeding at vegetable gardens (flowers are not the focus here).
The author starts with an overview of garden ecosystems and their many requirements, then heads into details on raised beds, which she strongly recommends. A wonderful...
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Buffer It! JoomShareBar Continuous Container Gardens: Swap In the Plants of the Season to Create Fresh Designs Year-Roundby Sara Begg Townsend and Roanne Robbins (Storey Publishing, 2010)
Revolutionary is not a word associated with container gardening. Yet Continuous Container Gardens is nothing short of radical. In the book, Sara Begg Townsend and Roanne Robbins introduce the reader to an entirely new approach to designing containers that is both seasonal and sustainable. Each of the containers the authors create makes use of natural elements and repurposed...
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Buffer It! JoomShareBar The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, the Quest to Make it Bloom, and the World it Created
by Tatiana Holway (Oxford University Press, 2013)
In 1837, while trekking through the Amazonian wilderness of British Guiana, one of Britain’s newest colonies in South America, botanist and explorer Robert Schomburgk suddenly encountered a monstrous water lily. Britain had developed a passion for plants (Wardian cases and greenhouses were modish for those who could afford them), and Queen Victoria had just taken...
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Buffer It! JoomShareBar The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty from Brandywine Cottage by David L. Culp with Adam Levine (Timber Press, 2012)
It is not unusual for an accomplished gardener with experience and plant knowledge to write a gardening book. Yet David Culp’s book, The Layered Garden, is special. Culp, a sales consultant, plant researcher, and vice president at Sunny Border Nurseries in Kensington, Connecticut, tells the story of how he and his partner Michael Alderfer developed and maintain their luscious home landscape...
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Landscaping for Privacy: Innovative Ways to Turn Your Outdoor Space into a Peaceful Retreat by Marty Wingate (Timber Press, 2011)
Whether a homeowner wants to limit a neighbor’s noise or the stray deer, this book from Seattle-based garden and travel writer Marty Wingate will seem heaven sent. Designed for both city and suburban garden living, the well-laid-out guide offers useful options and ideas on how to deter nearly any sort of intrusion.
The book is divided into three sections: buffers, barriers, and...
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New Bathroom Ideas That Work
by Scott Gibson (The Taunton Press, 2012)
For any homeowner contemplating a new bathroom, Scott Gibson’s New Bathroom Ideas That Work provides both hundreds of color photos and nitty-gritty details on how to approach the project. Chapters are divided by every section of a bathroom, such as fixtures, tubs and showers, floors, and lighting. The book is not a how-to but rather a how-to-get-prepared: Gibson offers advice on picking out architects, contractors, and designers while discouraging homeowners...
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The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century by Dickson Despommier (Picador, 2011)
Population experts predict that within the next 40 to 50 years, there will be three billion people added to the current world population of approximately seven billion people for a total world population of over ten billion. According to Dickson Despommier, a Columbia University professor of microbiology and public health in environmental health sciences, it would take a land mass the size of Brazil to feed these...
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From Art to Landscape: Unleashing Creativity in Garden Design by W. Gary Smith (Timber Press, 2010)
Gary Smith, an artist and landscape architect from Toronto, Ontario, has written a very personal book exploring his use of art to stimulate the free flow of ideas, which in turn inform his garden designs. The first part of From Art to Landscape: Unleashing Creativity in Garden Design is gently how-to. The author discusses building a visual vocabulary and investigates ways of seeing and how various artists...
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Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by Susan L. Morrison and Rebecca Sweet (Cool Springs Press, 2010)
Garden Up! offers ideas and projects to help you transform your garden or landscape by thinking in a new dimension—up. Like most great garden books, it is packed with inspiration and information and can change how you view and use your outdoor spaces.
Written by Susan L. Morrison and Rebecca Sweet, two talented and experienced landscape designers, the book is infused...
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The Encyclopedia of Container Plants by Ray Rogers, photography by Rob Cardillo (Timber Press, 2010)
You have got to love an encyclopedia with attitude. Fortunately, this is only one of the many attributes of The Encyclopedia of Container Plants, written by Ray Rogers and photographed by Rob Cardillo.
Half encyclopedia, half coffee-table book, The Encyclopedia of Container Plants is packed with information, opinions, and strikingly beautiful images of container gardens and plants. Beginning with the basics in a section aptly named, “A...
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Energy-Wise Landscape Design: A New Approach for Your Home and Gardenby Sue Reed (New Society Publishers, 2010)
Sue Reed does the seemingly impossible in Energy-Wise Landscape Design. In language that is at once practical and poetic, Reed challenges our notions of what defines beautiful landscaping, confronts our dependence on foreign oil, offers methods for harnessing nature’s own energy resources, and proposes step-by-step actions to make properties of any size energy efficient. And she does so without judgment.
Energy-Wise Landscape Design is this...
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The Other Side of Organized: Finding Balance Between Chaos and Perfection
by Linda Samuels, CPO-CD (Oh, So Publishing!, 2009)
In The Other Side of Organized, Linda Samuels guides the reader through a process to discover a level of order that is both comfortable and sustainable. She recognizes that both chronic disorganization and obsessive organization are detrimental to living a full life. “Whether you consider yourself chronically disorganized, highly organized, or somewhere in between, my hope is after reading this book you will...
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Organizing from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your LifeJulie Morgenstern (Henry Holt and Company, 2004)
Being organized may be the Holy Grail of the twenty-first century. Many of us have too much stuff, too little time, and are lacking the bandwidth to keep it all orderly and tidy. To make matters more confusing, we are deluged with images of perfect homes and offices, kitchens to die for, and even garages and basements that are visions...
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This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family UndoneMelissa Coleman (Harper Collins 2011)
Melissa Coleman’s new book, This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone, explores growing up on a rural Maine homestead in a dysfunctional family. It is also the story of how Melissa’s father, Elliot Coleman—visionary, outsized personality, and organic gardening pioneer—got his start.
The story begins in the late 1960s when Melissa’s parents, both from privileged, suburban...
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The Eat Local CookbookLisa Turner (Down East, 2011)
For family cooks, inundated with fresh produce from their community-supported agriculture (CSA) share, their own gardens, or a trip to a weekend farmer’s market, comes a delightful new cookbook by Lisa Turner of Laughing Stock Farm in Freeport, Maine. Turner, who supplies fresh organic produce to many Maine restaurants, helpfully divides her book by seasons. More than 100 recipes give plenty of ways to use all kinds of Down East specialties from kale...
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Prefab Green by Michelle Kaufmann and Catherine Remick(Gibbs Smith, 2009)
Modern prefabricated house designs are not for the faint of heart, nor are they for the untidy. The sleek and minimalist houses featured in Prefab Green by Michelle Kaufmann and Catherine Remick, aren’t for everyone. Like modern art, chances are you will either love or hate the aesthetics. The good news is that even if the houses aren’t your style, the book is an interesting read and has good information about why...
