As I've been looking over recent messages, it occurred to me that everyone – ok, every gardener - needs a good library of reference and inspiration books. So in the run-up to the holiday season, aka the festival of consumerism, I thought I'd share some of my favorites.
The must-have, although it's expensive, is Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs by Michael A. Dirr. Michael Dirr may be the best know horticulturist in the States. He's a professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia, and in addition to this book, he's written books on any number of plant species as well as the more extensive and detailed Manual of Woody Landscape Plants.
This book, the cover tells me, is intended mainly for people gardening in zones 3-6, although most of the plants will also do fine in zones 7-8. Dirr does have another book, Dirr's Trees and Shrubs for Warm Climates that addresses the needs of southern gardeners.
Trees and Shrubs is an encyclopedic listing of all the woody plant species (it includes vines) that grow in zones 3-6, regardless of where in the world those zones exist. It's alphabetical by Latin name, but it has an index of the plants by common names in the back. Dirr tells you the habit, or shape, of the plant, how to distinguish it by its leaves, and sometimes its bark, what conditions it will tolerate, such as dry soil or pollution, where it works well in the landscape, its mature size, zone tolerance, place of origin, and he also lists the most important cultivars of the plant. It's accompanied by multiple stunning photographs of each plant in many seasons.
Opening it at random, I find myself at Lindera benzoin, Spicebush. This is a native plant from Maine to Ontario and Kansas, south to Florida and Texas. There are pictures of the flower, the shrub in early leaf, in fall, and the fruit. We learn that it blooms early in April, grows into a large, multistemmed, rounded shrub, dense in sun and more open in shade. Fruit occur only on female plants, so if you want fruit you need both sexes (this is what it means when a plant is 'dioecious'). It likes moist, acid soils in full sun or part shade. Unfortunately, he tells us, it "has never found its way into commerce." This last, I'm pleased to say, is no longer true, at least in my area, where at least one of my nurseries carries it.
Michael Dirr's book allows you to page through and look at trees and shrubs if you're considering planting a new one. It lets you investigate the conditions favored by plants that are also favored by you. It introduces you to plants you'd never heard of, and teaches you about ones you have. If the price is off-putting (I paid about $90 several years ago), get it at the library. The companion Manual of Woody Landscape Plants doesn't have the photos but it's much more fully developed about, for example, diseases and pests of the plant.
At the back, it has fabulous lists: Design Characteristics, Flowering Times and Colors, Habit, Tolerance for Shade, Salt, Moisture; Fruit, Bark, Plants with Weeping Habits, Evergreens for various uses; Vines. He lists tress with columnar habits, in case you have a tight space; he lists shrubs by their flower colors; and he tells you what to prune when.
The second book I'm going to recommend isn't about plants per se, but about soil. But as the song goes, you can't have one without the other!
The book is Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. The first part of the book lays out the science of the soil food web in readable prose, with great illustrations including electron microscope images that I find thrilling. (I'll bet your grandkids will pore over the book.) The idea is that we've developed a system of agri- and horti-culture that depends on chemicals, but the chemical fertilizers (and pesticides and fungicides and herbicides) we add to the soil are actually harming the soil in the long run. In nature, nutrients cycle through the soil, and the abundant micro-organisms that live in soil digest old plant material and provide the fuel for new plant growth. We can help make our gardens more fertile by attending to soil biology instead of soil chemistry.
After they explain the science, including short chapters on each of the various organisms found in soil , Lowenfels and Lewis explain how we can improve our garden soils through mulch, compost, and compost tea, and they have chapters on lawns, trees, shrubs and perennials, and annuals and vegetables, and a garden calendar.
On to more plant books, now that you've got your soil energized.
The Taylor's Guides are very helpful, I find. Like most other plant books, they're alphabetical by Latin name, but the index includes common names. You can leaf through them to find plants whose looks you fall for (it's a little like internet dating) and then turn to the back of the guide for the information on the growing conditions in which the plant thrives (this is like reading the prospects' self-descriptions, except it's probably more factual). Or you can look up a plant you have, or want, or saw in a friend's garden, and find out lots more about it. One of my favorites is the guide to annuals because, well, being annuals we don't have to worry about what zone they'll take, since we only want to date them, not to get hitched. Opening it at random I come to Brachyscome iberidifolia (fun to try to pronounce), or Swan River Daisy. It's a cool weather annual, so don't plant it in June. It grows in full sun in rich, well-drained soil (well, who doesn't like rich, well-drained soil? actually, you can find plants that'll grow on your dry patch without any attention too.). It grows 1-1.5 feet, so you'd plant it in the middle of a bed, maybe in late April, to hide some of the fading foliage from your bulbs, and plan to take it out in mid-June to be replaced by something like Nicotiana alata in one of its more compact forms. The books would benefit from better cross-organizing, for example, by listing plants by size, or season, or color, but they're still great references.
Pam Duthie has a couple of books that are very useful when you're thinking about how to put plants together in your garden so that they give you bloom from spring through fall. They're called Continuous Bloom and Continuous Color. My copy of Continuous Bloom got loaned to a friend last summer and still hasn't made it back, but I have Continuous Color right here. Continuous Bloom gives you suggestions – and images – of perennials to plant together so that the colors complement each other and the plants have similar cultural needs ('cultural needs' in relation to plants doesn’t mean that you have to read Proust to them or play Mahler; it has to do with whether they like sun or shade, moist or dry, etc.). Continuous Color gives images and information about shrubs and small trees, organized month by month to show how you can plant these bones of your garden so that you have interest – not always blooms, but colorful branches, attractive dried flowers, and so on – all year long. Duthie tells you the zone, flower and fruit, habit and foliage, height, width, light needs, soil needs, care, uses, and problems of each shrub. She also offers 'insider's tips' on the plant and suggestions of other plants to combine with it. She includes chapters on foliage for summertime color, foliage for fall color, fruit for fall color, and evergreens for year-round color. In back she has charts, so you can look up what plants have purple foliage in summer and then find one that works for your spot. The books are beautiful, with gorgeous photos. They are part of the category I call plant porn. (Honesty requires that I confess that Pam is a colleague in the Landscape Design Association and the Midwest Ecological Landscaping Association here in Chicago.)
If you like, let me know and I'll review more plant books. My current scheme is to give you short reviews of some of my favorite garden design books next time.
In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, and let us know what you're grateful for this season. And do visit my website at view link My book, Out of the Shadow: Ecopsychology, Stories, and Encounters with the Land, will be released next week, and of course I'd love it if you'd give it a whirl.
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