I feel just like I did when I was six years old. My mother would never let me start working on my Christmas list until Thanksgiving. Well, I’ve been wanting to write this article for at least six weeks, now. The BIG news is that the new gardening books are beginning to arrive! I haven’t wanted to share any details with you yet—I know that just hearing about flowers and plants too early can delay spring for a month. Talk about new varieties of anything with your neighbor and the last frost won’t arrive until the 4th of July.
The same thought process always postpones my annual trip to visit my sister until at least the first of April. You see, Jane lives 450 miles to our south. If I visit too early, when I get home I have to wait forever for us to catch up weather-wise. I can’t begin to tell you how heartbreaking it was to visit my North Carolina kids a few years ago. I was marking off weeks on the calendar waiting for it to warm up enough to plant pansies. …in North Carolina pansies that WINTER OVER were already blooming. My (pale) green thumb just can’t seem to lose its Oklahoma accent.
New at the library:
Miracle-Gro Complete Guide to Roses: Choosing, Planting, Growing. The book cover says this is “the rose gardener’s reference to the best varieties.” Plenty of information about growing culture, climate zones, etc. I was attracted to the pages concerning choosing low-maintenance roses.
Organic Gardening for the 21st Century: A Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers by John Fedor. The title of this one just says it all.
Twilight Garden: A Guide to Enjoying Your Garden in the Evening Hours by Lia Leendertz. This book has the most beautiful photos. It’s worth paging through.
The Vegetable Gardener’s Container Bible: How to Grow a Bounty of Food in Pots, Tubs and Other Containers by Edward C. Smith. This is my new plan….grow everything edible in pots. No weeding needed!
Midwest Home Landscaping: 46 Landscape Designs and Over 200 Plants for Your Region by Roger Holmes and Rita Buchanan. The photos are appealing, but what I appreciate the most are the plans included for each design. Each shows what type of plant, how many and how far apart each should be. All you need is a shovel.
Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail.
Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World by Ross Chapin. I don’t even know how to explain this one to you, other than it’s full of charming photos of lovely neighborhoods. Some of these neighborhoods were planned in advance of construction and some developed into pocket neighborhoods organically. Either way, this book is a delight.
Container Gardening: 250 Design Ideas & Step-by-Step Techniques from the editors of Fine Gardening Magazine. This is a different sort of container gardening. Pots and tubs and flower boxes of eye candy. I’ve been admiring the big urns of plants in front of Bank Iowa for several years. I’m going for something dramatic on my own front steps this year.
Complete Guide to Water Gardens: Ponds, Fountains, Waterfalls, Streams by Kathleen Fisher. For the lazy among us, this book can serve as a coffee table book. Lots and lot of luscious pictures of garden features that I can appreciate but never replicate. For the more adventuresome of you, the diagrams and charts are complete enough that you could have a quiet pond or a gurgling brook in your back yard by Memorial Day.
If you’ve been eager to get out into your garden this year, stop by the library. We can help you grow!