Page-Turners for Your Favorite Plant Lover
Tools would be nice holiday gifts for gardeners, but what if that gardener you know already has them? Ditto with more plants for their yard.
Books on gardening might be a better gift--and easier to wrap.
There are several new books I’d love to receive if I didn’t already have review copies (sorry, kids).
Tops on my list would be a humble little paperback called “Plant Life in the World’s Mediterranean Climates” (University of California Press, $29.95) by Peter R. Dallman
It’s already the rage among serious plant people in Northern California.
I’m tempted to call it a missing link in the world of gardening books because it brings together information on California and the other four Mediterranean climates--Chile, South Africa, Australia and the Mediterranean basin--comparing and contrasting them so you get a much better idea of just how unique our climate is.
It also includes sections on traveling to these parts of the world, if you want to become even more familiar with them.
But it is the charts, tables and the descriptions of the various plant communities--such as the fymbos, maquis and the chaparral--that are fascinating.
Suddenly you feel as though you might know why that lavender didn’t do as well as expected, or why cape bulbs do much better because you now know where they come from and what that climate is like.
There are facts like: Our wettest month averages 7.8 inches of rain and our driest gets exactly zero, while sun-baked Perth, Australia, gets 19.2 inches during its wettest month and in the driest month receives .7 inches. That’s a fat clue to why western Australian plants can be tough to grow here but do pretty well in rainier Santa Cruz. That and the fact that they grow on almost pure gravel.
Though the book is not written in technical jargon, I wouldn’t call this an easy read. But you don’t need to scoot right through it. Pick it up and read parts over that morning cup of coffee or before you doze off at night, and you’ll learn a lot about our special climate.
While we get 7.8 inches in our rainiest month, San Francisco gets 11.6 inches, which, in part, explains why the plants in “Gardens of the Wine Country” (Chronicle Books, $40) by Molly Chappellet and Richard Tracy look so happy.
Tracy is the respected garden editor for the Sacramento Bee, and Chappellet co-owns Chappellet Vineyard. She is also a principal of a design company and “an avid gardener,” according to the dust jacket, and the design talent shows in her selection of outstanding gardens.
This is a handsome, all-color coffee-table book, as elegant as a Cabernet and as California as a Zinfandel. And it’s full of fascinating visual ideas.
For instance, faded red barns really do look good in a garden, as do garden-sized chess boards. OK, so they don’t exactly translate into the typical backyard, but this book won’t disappoint dreamers.
At about a quarter the size and half the cost, “In the French Kitchen Garden: The Joys of Cultivating a Potager” (Chronicle Books, $18.95) by food and garden writer Georgeanne Brennan is a delightful book illustrated with wonderful watercolors by Melissa Sweet.
This is a how-to book by someone who gardens in Northern California and Provence. Imagine! It includes such delicacies as arugula, tat-soi (a flat Asian cabbage) and radishes, all of which, she says, “can be put nearly anywhere in the garden and will be ready to eat within 30 days of sowing.”
There are summer and winter plans for the potager, winter being the season most books leave out, since their authors are often under a few feet of snow or are expecting lots of frosty days at this time of year.
In it, Brennan includes everything from strawberries and artichokes to frisee and garlic. It doesn’t take much effort to visualize this cornucopia in your own backyard.
The proprietor of Larner Seeds in Bolinas, one of our truest sources for California wildflower seed, has written a book on “restoring California’s native landscape at home,” called “Gardening With a Wild Heart” (University of California Press, $17.95) by Judith Larner Lowry.
It’s full of that hard-to-find, first-hand, real-life information, by an expert.
While Larner’s reasonable paperback may be best as a stocking stuffer, the all-color, 700-page-plus “Botanica’s Roses” (Random House, Mynah Books, $50) is the rose fancier’s equivalent of finding a Lionel train set under the tree. It’s such a massive book that it comes in its own carrying case, complete with handle, and a CD-ROM.
Many consultants contributed, including Southern Californian Tommy Cairns, so the information is useful and the endless photographs are stunning. It’s mostly an encyclopedia of rose varieties.
Because it was originally an English book, there are some curious entries in the cultural section, such as the paragraph on “Cuckoo Spit,” an English pest also called the “common froghopper.” Don’t expect to find the latest control for rose slugs or rust here.
But why dwell on the bad guys during the holidays? (Most are dormant now anyway.) How about reading up on the guys in the white hats in “Natural Enemies Handbook” (University of California Press, $35).
This heavy-duty book draws on the vast experience of the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management Project. Countless good bugs are illustrated in color with clear information on how to lure them into the garden--and keep them there.
There are lists of pests and what attacks them, information on pesticides that can harm (or be used with) beneficial insects, plus other management techniques.
The ways good bugs destroy bad bugs may be a little stomach-wrenching (eating them from the inside out, “Alien”-style), but fewer bad bugs is good, right? To order, call (800) 994-8849.
If these books sound too serious for that friend or family member, consider “Poinsettias, the December Flower” (Waters Edge, $21.95) by Christine Anderson and Terry Tischer. This is an interesting and artsy book. And everyone has grown, or at least temporarily housed, a poinsettia--150 million potted poinsettias are sold each year.
