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Tools for the Mind: Books and More for Gardeners
by Sally Williams
There is a daunting plethora of data available to North American gardeners, information both helpful and inspiring. And far too much for anyone to tackle head-on. Scores of garden periodicals are published each year; thousands of garden books sit on library and store shelves; millions of web sites appear on the computer screen when you enter "gardening" in a search engine. The first thing we all need are tools to help us find our way through today's information glut to just the right book, just the right article, just the right web site.
Sources of Sources
I recommend beginning with resources that help find resources. There are several equivalents for gardeners, but a good place to start is Gardening by Mail (5th edition, 1997). It is an annotated directory of sources, mostly for products that can be purchased by mail, plus lists of books, magazines, catalogs, computer programs, videos and web sites, libraries, horticultural organizations, and plant and seed sellers. With Gardening by Mail, which editor Barbara Barton revises every few years, you'll find sources of information for any regional need or special topic. Interested in garden restoration? In buying ergonomic tools? In touring gardens or joining the Rock Garden Society? It's all there.
You'll also want to find relevant books and periodical articles. Books bring information together in a coherent way and are easy to use. Periodicals—journals, magazines, newsletters, and newspapers that are published regularly—contain a broad range of topics and provide current and timely data. Although computerized media are gaining in acceptance among gardeners, we still love books and magazines! But how do you find a book about Thomas Jefferson's garden at Monticello, or an up-to-date article on growing apples organically?
For this you need an index, a catalog, or list of citations of books and published articles that you can search in various ways, usually by author or topic, such as "old roses," or by plant name, title of book reviewed, or all of the above. Some magazines publish indexes to their own articles, but many do not. While general indexes and databases that include a few national garden magazines, such as the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, are available in large libraries, searchable topics tend to be very broad, and many worthy articles are overlooked. Let me tell you about two of the best-kept secrets in the world of garden literature.
Seed starting, like child raising, is attended by innumerable theories. —Josephine Nuese, The Country Garden, 1970
First—and here I admit to tooting my own horn—is Garden Literature: An Index to Periodical Articles and Book Reviews, an index devoted to gardening magazines. I began it in 1991 partly because I couldn't find the information I wanted. Garden Literature is an annual listing of articles in a dozen of the leading horticulture magazines published in the U.S. and U.K. Each article is listed under author and under multiple topics, including plant names, names of gardens, and garden designers; reviews (books, software, and videos) are listed by author or creator and title.
Second, you can locate relevant articles and books through Plant Information Online, a database compiled by the Andersen Horticultural Library (Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, University of Minnesota) and available on its web site (plantinfo.umn.edu). It is both an index to pictures of plants published in books and magazines and an excellent source of information, since most books and magazine articles include illustrations. The web site also contains sources for some 70,000 plants and seeds.
The premier U.S. publisher of garden books is Timber Press. Others to look for are Chelsea Green, Fulcrum Publishing, Houghton Mifflin, Rodale Press, Sunset Books, Taunton Press, and Ten Speed Press. If you are unsure about a book's merits, buy from bookstores that screen their wares for quality. The mail-order bookstores of the American Horticultural Society, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the American Nurseryman Publishing Company carefully select their stock. You may want to shop online for the best price. If you don't require new books the instant they're published, you'll find even bigger discounts from Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller, who sells remaindered books (www.edwardrhamilton.com).
Filling an Information Toolbox
There are basic tools no gardener would be without—trowel, spade, hoe, and rake come to mind—but there is less agreement among gardeners about which tools for the mind, books and periodicals, are essential. It depends on where you live and what kind of garden you tend. You may want to create a balanced horticultural library, with books and periodicals on all aspects of gardening; or you may want information only about a particular aspect of horticulture, such as heirloom roses. Whatever your plan, wherever your location, keep in mind that gardening information has two basic functions: to inform and to inspire. Ask of any tool you are considering which of the two is its main purpose, and ask yourself which of the two you seek.
The general periodicals I can't do without are The American Gardener, The Avant Gardener, Brooklyn Botanic Garden's handbooks and its Plants & Gardens News, Fine Gardening, The Garden, Garden Design, Gardens Illustrated, Horticulture, Allen Lacy's Homeground, HortIdeas, Hortus, and Pacific Horticulture, plus magazines for my special interests, regional needs, and international desires. Several of these are available online, usually modified in scope, and some are in the public library.
A writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subject—I take that as inevitable. —Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts, 1981
You may be surprised at how many periodicals are available. Did you know that there are publications devoted exclusively to growing chile peppers, to mushrooms, to bamboo, to ivy? Extensive lists of periodicals appear in Gardening by Mail and in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, which is available in public libraries. Many garden web sites also maintain lists of garden periodicals, both general and specialized, but you'll have to visit more than one to compile a good list.
As for books, here are my suggestions for a core collection of "tried and true" in-print works. The absence of a title does not mean the book lacks merit, nor does its inclusion mean that it is the only worthy one. In fact, there are hundreds of great books waiting for the right home. I hope this minimal selection stimulates you to search for them!
General Reference
For comprehensive information about gardens and gardening, you can't go wrong with The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Gardener's Desk Reference (1998), Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (1997), or Wyman's Gardening Encyclopedia (1986). Rita Buchanan's Taylor's Master Guide to Landscaping (2000) is an excellent one-volume guide to garden design.
Plants
If you can have only one book on plants (impossible for most gardeners) you should have the American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (1997). "Must-haves" for digging deeper are Allan Armitage's Garden Perennials: A Color Encyclopedia (2000), and Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (1997) by Michael A. Dirr.
Annuals and bulbs are covered well in Annuals with Style: Design Ideas From Classic to Cutting Edge (2000) by Thomas Christopher and Michael A. Ruggiero, and Taylor's Guide to Bulbs (2001) by Barbara W. Ellis. Native plants are well served in the New England Wild Flower Society Guide to Growing and Propagating Wildflowers of the United States and Canada (2000) by William Cullina. Herb mavens say the new bible is The Big Book of Herbs (2000) by gurus Arthur O. Tucker and Thomas DeBaggio. A good combo for edibles is Burpee: The Complete Vegetable and Herb Gardener (1997) by Karan Davis Cutler, and William Woys Weaver's Heirloom Vegetable Gardening (1997).
To find sources for purchasing specific species and cultivars, consult the Andersen Horticultural Library's Source List of Plants and Seeds (5th edition, 1999) or its web site (www.arboretum.umn.edu/library); the Seed Savers Exchange's inventories of nonhybrid flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits (www.seedsavers.org); and Cornucopia II (1998), an exhaustive list of hybrid and open-pollinated vegetable cultivars. Many plant societies, such as the American Rose Society, regularly publish definitive lists of plant names and sources.
Whatever may be said about the seedsmen's and nurserymen's methods, their
catalogue writers are my favorite authors and produce my favorite reading
matter.
—Katharine S. White, Onward and Upward in the Garden, 1979
Garden History
Garden history is an aspect too often overlooked by gardeners. An understanding of our roots does much to enhance the enjoyment of our gardens and the landscape around us. Alas, my one-volume candidate, Julia S. Berrall's The Garden: An Illustrated History from Egypt to the Present Day (1966), is out of print, but is so good that it's worth looking for in used bookstores (or select one of the many editions offered online through Bibliofind, www.bibliofind.com). An Illustrated History of Gardening (1998) by Anthony Huxley will get you thinking about garden tools and techniques, and Michael Weishan's The New Traditional Garden (1999) will introduce you to America's garden history. To dig deeper, read classics Early American Gardens: "For Meate or Medicine" (1970) by Ann Leighton; Keeping Eden (1992) edited by Walter T. Punch; and The Golden Age of American Gardens (1991) by Mac Griswold and Eleanor Weller.
Garden Visits
Important in any information toolbox are resources for visiting gardens, which are sources of inspiration and learning. The Garden Tourist is one of the first publications I renew annually because it lists flower shows and garden tours as well as gardens to visit. The Garden Conservancy's Open Days Directory (www.gardenconservancy.org) is always with me as well. I also rely on the National Geographic Guide to America's Public Gardens (1998) and regional guidebooks published by Michael Kesend Publishing, Mitchell Beazley (Europe), Princeton Architectural Press (U.S. and Europe), Random House Australia, Sasquatch Books, and Trafalgar Square.
Gardening Online
How do you wade through the mire of so many useful (and some not so useful) online garden web sites? Especially when sites are here today and gone tomorrow? The good news is that it takes just one or two sites to link you to thousands of other sites. One that does this well is Gardening Launch Pad (www.gardeninglaunchpad.com), which has nearly 4,500 links, many noncommercial, arranged alphabetically by subject.
Also take a look at the "Gardener's Guide to Finding Answers on the Internet," which is posted on the Garden Gate site (garden-gate.prairienet.org), an old favorite gateway. It introduced me to PlantAmerica's extensive illustrated plant database (plantdb.plantamerica.com), which utilizes search engines to collect web citations that link to its plant pages. And check the U.S. Department of Agriculture's database (plants.usda.gov) or the "Pest Alerts" section on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden web site for invasive species to avoid when you make plant selections. Another superb resource is Ohio State University's Plant Facts (plantfacts.ohio-state.edu), a searchable database connecting scores of U.S. and Canadian university and government institutions—instant access to 20,000 pages of extension-service fact sheets and bulletins.
You can get general and regional gardening tips, articles, and online shopping by visiting commercial sites such as Gardennet (www.gardennet.com). If you want to avoid the "noise" of advertising, try the sites of the American Horticultural Society (www.ahs.org) and Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Most commercial firms—both manufacturers and retailers—now have web sites, usually with their own name as the site address (for example, www.ames.com or www.gardentoolsofmaine.com). If you don't know a company's web address, search the company name in a search engine, such as google (www.google.com) or yahoo (www.yahoo.com), or just type in the company's name plus .com. Most times, you'll find exactly what you're looking for.
Sally Williams, who gardens in Boston and Maine, is editor and publisher of Garden Literature, an index to periodical articles and book reviews. A compulsive reader and gardener, she is creating a garden on the site of a junkyard, a project that will last a lifetime.