Gift ideas….

Jody Burns from the Master Gardeners asked me if I thought you’d be interested in good gardening books – I told her, well yeah. So here’s some ideas for gifts:

Garden Books for Giving

What would the gardener on your holiday gift list want most?  Apart from a load of compost, or an exotic new plant, or even some new pruners, your gardener might like a new book or two.  This is the season for reading catalogs and books when it is too wet to get out and dig.

With the advice of some master gardeners and some avid gardeners we have compiled a list of some helpful and interesting books.

Steve's book....

In this age when everyone has put in or is thinking about putting in a vegetable garden, we thought we would start with the practical. Alice Deane, a San Juan Master Gardener, who feeds her family with the produce from her garden, has some suggestions.  She likes Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, an old standby that still holds up.  Also Eliot Coleman, who gardens in Maine, has one called Four Season Harvest that is useful for Northwest growing conditions.

There is another book that may only be available as used which is entitled Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest by Binda Colebrook.  For a different world view Steve Solomon, since moving to Tasmania, has written another book called Gardening When It Counts, Growing Food in Hard Times.    And for those who are interested in saving seeds there is Seed to Seed, Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth and Kent Whealy.

Even for experienced gardeners, pruning can be intimidating.  There are two books that may take some of the mystery out of the process, Guide to Pruning by Cass Turnbull and the Royal Horticultural Society-Pruning by Christopher Brickell.

The guide you'll need...

The field of ornamental horticulture can be overwhelming so we have narrowed some selections down to what might be applicable in the Pacific Northwest.

Betsy Louton, a gardener on Orcas, likes Debra Prinzing and Mary Robson’s Washington and Oregon Gardener’s Guide as well as Tree and Shrub Gardening for Washington and Oregon, and she says that she always goes back to Ann Lovejoy’s Handbook of Northwest Gardening.

Alice Deane and noted botanist Richard Norris also like the Timber Press Guide to Gardening in the Pacific Northwest by Carol W. and Norman E. Hall.  A subscription to Pacific Horticulture might be something for someone’s stocking.

Finally, I have a few books that are just for reading.

A global look...

Andrea Wulf’s book entitled The Brother Gardeners, Botany Empire and the Birth of an Obsession, which explores the movement of plants around the globe.

Wayne Winterrowd who died on September 17^th of this year gardened with Joe Eck in southern Vermont at a place called North Hill, and together they wrote some wonderful gardening books, the latest, Our Life in Gardens, just was published in paperback.

There is a new book, published in April, that I have put on my list called Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser As You Grow Older by Sydney Eddison.

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