Guides, inspiration & relaxing reads: A taste of the latest gardening books

By CHERYL B. WILSON Bulletin Contributing Writer

Published on April 09, 2010

GARDENING is reportedly the most popular hobby in America, and garden book publishing is thriving. Each year it seems that hundreds of new titles are added to the already incredible inventory. This spring I have found five books of interest to people with different focuses in gardening.

Vegetable gardening is gaining in popularity, partly due to the economy and partly due to concerns about the food supply. There are plenty of vintage books on vegetables beginning with Jim Crockett's "The Victory Garden," but more are published every year.

For someone who would like to start a vegetable garden but is feeling daunted by the challenge, there is a great new book just for you: "Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens" by Barbara Pleasant.

Experts always advise beginners to start small and this book shows you how to do that without even digging! Pleasant describes in detail how to plant vegetables right in bags of soil on the ground for your first garden. She also has other plans including laborious double-digging for more ambitious gardeners.

Each garden plan specifies how many seed packets or vegetable starts to buy and what tools you will need. (You could borrow some from a neighbor.) She also predicts what kind of harvest you can anticipate and what problems you should watch for. She gives detailed information on recommended vegetable varieties based on her own experience and she has plans for different areas of the country.

Pleasant shows how to plant seeds indoors and outdoors and has great tips for constructing trellises, placing soaker hoses and dealing with pests. Anyone, even an experienced gardener, can learn from her book, which is published by Storey Publishing for $19.95 in paper.

For the historians

Garden history appeals to many gardeners and there are two new books for historians. For those of us who love Jane Austen it simply isn't possible to turn aside from a book titled "In the Garden with Jane Austen." Kim Wilson (no relation) has put together a fascinating small volume about the gardens Jane Austen knew and loved.

There are ample photographs of Chawton Cottage, where she spent the last decade of her life, as well as pictures of gardens in Bath and London that she might have known. There is considerable information about the philosophy of gardening in Austen's time, especially the concept of shrubberies for genteel walks.

Wilson discusses the popularity of Humphrey Repton and his colleagues in "improving" landscapes in a more natural manner from the traditional parterres and formal beds of the 18th century. In "Mansfield Park," Mr. Rushworth is determined to improve his property even though it means cutting down a gorgeous allee of trees.

There is a helpful list of the gardens in recent films of Austen's novels, a great itinerary for Jane Austen fans bound for England. Wilson quotes from Austen's letters to her sister, Cassandra, about gardening as well as citing passages in her novels about flowers and trees and nature.

It is fun to learn that the mock-orange, which she called Syringe, was her favorite shrub. If you are a Janeite, this book should be on your wish list. I bought it at the Morgan Library in New York the last weekend of an exhibition on "Jane Austen's Wit" but it is available through Amazon. It was published by Jones Books in Madison, Wis. for $21.95.

Another book about gardens of the past is Jane B. Tankard's wonderful biography of Beatrix Farrand. My favorite garden in America is Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., probably Farrand's greatest extant masterpiece. I already knew that Farrand was a New York socialite who turned her incredible talents to landscape gardening in the early 20th century. She was also Edith Wharton's niece.

Farrand initially drew upon her society connections to get commissions for private gardens. Later her stellar reputation garnered her work from Maine to California. In addition to incredible estate gardens, she was instrumental in designing the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Botanic Garden as well as doing extensive design work on the landscapes of Princeton and Yale universities, among several educational institutions.

I learned so much about Farrand from this exceedingly well-written book. She was influenced by Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson in England, by the Arts and Crafts Movement and by the formal gardens of Italy, which she visited first as a girl and later in her life.

The book is filled with photos, both old and recent, luring me to visit gardens in Maine (especially the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Bar Harbor, which is open only by appointment.) There are also lots of garden plans - a little hard to decipher in their reduced form - as well as intriguing photographs of Farrand and her family. In one photo she is as glamorous as Katherine Hepburn. Anyone interested in garden history should read this book. It was published by The Monacelli Press for $60.

Well-phrased advice

An entirely different kind of book is "The Ultimate Flower Gardener's Top Ten Lists" by Kerry Ann Mendez, who was the keynote speaker at the March 20 garden symposium sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association. Mendez, who owns Perennially Yours, a garden consultation and education business in upstate New York, offers 70 "garden-transforming" lists.

I suppose you might call them annotated lists for these are not simple lists of plant names. For instance her chapter on "Top Ten Perennial Climbers" begins with several pages of advice on growing climbing plants, especially tips on clematis. Her section on pruning tips includes the reasons for pruning in the first place, not just how and when to prune specific plants. Throughout the book Mendez demonstrates her signature sense of humor and enthusiasm for gardening that make her lectures so dynamic. Whether it's how to fertilize, what to plant in wet soil, which 10 perennials are most rabbit- or deer-resistant or how to evaluate plants at a garden center, Mendez has plenty of good, well-phrased advice for the beginning gardener or the expert. Her book costs $21 and was self-published by Lone Oak Press. It is available directly from Mendez at www.pyours.com.

The garden as solace

"The Meditative Gardener," another self-published book, is really more about meditation than gardening. Yet gardens have long been sources of healing and solace and places to meditate about the beauties of nature.

I acquired this book because I sat next to the author, Cheryl Wilfong, of Brattleboro, Vt., at a regional meeting of the Garden Writers of America in Boston in February. I was struck by the beauty of the photographs and the novel idea of a book about meditation and gardening. In her introduction Wilfong writes, "Sometimes gardening can be challenging, but we don't go to the garden to be bothered - by people or insects or plants. We go for the enjoyment, for the pleasure of being in the garden and maybe to just get away from it all for a little while."

Wilfong teaches at the Vermont Insight Meditation Center and says she spends as much time in her garden as possible. Several friends provided the stunning photos in the book, pictures of flowers and landscapes that could certainly be takeoff points for serious meditations on the incredible complex beauty of gardens and plants. For details on purchasing this book, a $35 paperback, check the Web site: www.meditativegardener.com.

The last two books were self-published, meaning they are printed at the expense of the author rather than by a nationally-known publisher. Before we get snobby about this kind of publishing, recall that in Jane Austen's day, the author frequently had to pay the publisher for printing. Austen lost money on many of her books, which didn't become hughly popular until after her death. If she or her heirs were reaping royalties today she would be a multimillionaire!

There are probably dozens of other new garden books available at your local book store or library. Every gardener needs a good reference book, another book that inspires great design and a book of essays to read at night for relaxation. Gardening is a self-help activity but a good guide certainly is useful.

Cheryl Wilson can be reached at valleygardens@comcast.net