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 November / December 2005 |
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November / December 2005 |
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 Local Garden Clubs Opportunities Catalogues Herbs Cookbooks Resources Bits & Pieces
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Garden Books Just for Texas Not so many years ago, almost every garden book you picked up spent a lot of time telling you how to cope with snow and hard winters. Finally, there are many great gardening books that deal with the specific joys and trials of Texas gardeners. Sally Wasowski was one of the first landscapers to focus on Texas native plants. In her first book, Requiem for a Lawnmower (recently re-released), she advocated planting native plants and minimizing the water-gobbling, fertilizer-demanding and bug-prone lawns that had enslaved us for years. After the success of that book, Sally paired with her photographer-husband Andy Wasowsk i to create Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region . That book, packed with color pictures, showed us how beautiful native landscapes could be and gave us a reference to identify and choose the plants we liked best. Since then, there has been no stopping the Wasowskis. The have published Gardening with Prairie Plants, Building Inside Nature’s Envelope, Native Texas Gardens, Gardening with Native Plants of the South and Native Landscaping from El Paso to L.A. The Beck and Garrett is team another writing duo that has provided a wonderful choice of resources for Texas Gardeners. Malcolm Beck , one of the first organic gardening advocate in Texas, wrote Lessons in Nature: The Garden-Ville Method to tell how he had learned how to garden in harmony with Nature. He also authored The Secret Life of Compost that covered everything from the small home garden pile to large industrial composting. A few years later, Beck paired with Howard Garrett , Dallas radio personality and organic gardening evangelist, to write the Texas Bug Book and Texas Organic Vegetable Garden . Garrett has also written several books on his own: Texas Gardening the Natural Way, Plants for Texas, Plants of the Metroplex, Texas Trees , and Herbs for Texas along with Odena Brannam Most Texas gardeners are familiar with Mike Shoup , the man who brought antique roses back from the dead and established The Antique Rose Emporium. He also wrote, along with Liz Druitt , one of the first gardening books with a focus on Texas. Now out of print, Landscaping with Antique Roses , let us know that antique roses would happily grow in herbaceous borders, along fence rows, and in any old spot in the garden without extra care and without toxic spray. Since that first effort, Druitt has written The Organic Rose Garden, a book no rose lover should be without. William Welch wrote Antique Roses for the South and Shoup published Roses in Southern Gardens . All of these books are packed with beautiful photographs that both inspire and educate. Carmine Stahl and Ria McElvaney combined forces to create Trees of Texas: An Easy Guide to Leaf Identification. In addition to being a really useful book, this is a really beautiful book. It includes stunning photographs of trees, leaves and branches of most of the major trees of Texas, including large flowering shrubs. In addition to identification, it provides information about the requirements and habitats of the trees. It makes you want to plant a forest! If you are interested in general landscaping information, you might want to check out Home landscaping Texas by Greg Grant and Roger Holmes. One is a series of landscaping books from Creative Homeowner publications, this book give you ideas on how to combine plants, how to arrange your beds and which varieties are recommended for Texas gardens. And if you just can’t remember what to do next, you’ll want Month-By-Month Gardening in Texas by Dale Groom and Dan GIll . This book does just what the title says it will. It tells you what to do in your garden in each month of the year. It includes information on general plant care as well as specific focus on house plants, annuals, bulbs, lawns and perennials. Speaking of perennials, Julie Ryan wrote Perennial Gardens for Texas several years ago and it remains the standard on that subject. This book is a complete guide to perennial gardening in Texas and similar regions. In Part One, she offers a historical sketch of cottage gardens and perennial borders, with a sampler of some of their modern variations. In Part Two, she defines the major ecological regions of Texas and, with words and color photographs, takes you on a tour of lovely public and private gardens in each region. You'll find all the "how to" information for creating your own garden in Part Three. Lots of color photos help you identify and choose the perennials right for you. Another standard that has been around a while, but still can’t be beat is Gardening with Difficult Soils by Scott Ogden. If you live in Texas, you know what difficult soils mean — alkaline, clay, limestone, caliche and rock. Scott tells which plants can not only survive but thrive in these conditions and offers good advice for every gardener. Some writers are just fun to read, no matter what they are writing about. Felder Rushing is one of those. His first book, Passalong Plants, is a favorite and his new book, Tough Plants for Southern Gardens is full of great information and entertaining reading. Although not a Texan, Rushing writes for gardens in hot, sticky climates and can be forgiven for having been born in the wrong place because his prose is such fun. If you garden on the Gulf Coast, you’ll want all of Brenda Beust Smith ’s Books. Billing herself as The Lazy Gardener, she writes columns and books focusing on how to garden without breaking your back in the demanding coastal region. The Lazy Gardener’s Guide and Gardening with Dogs are two of her books. Her publisher Sally McQueen Squire is author of The Complete Guide to Growing Bulbs in Houston. These are just a few of the wonderful books about gardening in Texas. New ones are being offered daily. Aren’t we lucky! |
