Tag Archives: Book Review

The Invention of Nature

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California’s Board of Education has included five environmental principles for the curriculum:

  • People depend on natural systems.
  • People influence natural systems.
  • Natural systems change in ways that people benefit from and can influence.
  • There are no permanent or impermeable boundaries that prevent matter from flowing between systems.
  • Decisions affecting resources and natural systems are complex and involve many factors.

These very basic ideas certainly are important in learning about the environment.

These principles are an updated version of ideas that were expressed in the early 1800s by Alexander von Humboldt (1969–1859), who presented his views of how the forces of nature interact with one another and about the unity of nature.

At the time, Humboldt’s ideas were the leading edge of leading scientists’ understanding of natural systems. He developed these ideas by traveling extensively through South America and Central America, closely observing nature, and, significantly, learning from the wise practices of native populations.

Humboldt was one of the great polymaths of history. He was the earliest geobotanist, studying the geographic distribution of plants (also called phytogeography), but also made important contributions to meteorology, and geology. His greatest contributions are in the area called terrestrial physics, which deals with the dynamic interconnections that comprise natural systems.

A new book by Andrea Wulf describes Humboldt’s momentous journey through life in impressive and readable detail: The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (Knopf, 2016). The book is organized chronologically, in five parts.

Humboldt shared his extensive knowledge and advanced ideas through extensive publications, correspondence, and public lectures. His major work was Cosmos. Sketch for a Physical Description of the Universe. This five-volume work, was widely read and highly regarded, and added to his reputation as the greatest scientists of his era.

Humboldt conversed with many prominent people of his day and directly or indirectly influenced a long list of scientists, authors, and political leaders, too many to list here.

Today, Humboldt might not be known as well as some other early scientist. Author Andrea Wulf has commented that the truth of Humboldt’s views has become so widely accepted that the man himself has become less visible. Still, many admirers have honored him by attaching his name attached to more places and things than anyone else. These include a northern California county. An impressive list of these recognitions is available in Wikipedia’s entry for Alexander von Humboldt. (See also Wikipedia’s entry, “Humboldtian Science.”)

Andrea Wulf, who has also written about other historically important botanists, has provided a masterful, readable, and valuable account of the “formidable genius” Alexander von Humboldt. The New York Times named The Invention of Nature as one of the best books of 2015 and several additional reviewers recognized its quality, This book presents the fascinating story of a man who explained the natural context in which gardening is done.

Survey of Garden Customers

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Your local garden center has a continuing interest in what its customers seek and will seek in the future. That information has much to do with the success of the business, another factor that can affect the growth and success of your business is using a enterprise investment scheme for your finance.

One important source of trends among gardening customers is the National Gardening Survey, a private company that conducts annual surveys of consumers of garden-related products. The NGS has recently released its 2015 survey.

The full survey is quite pricey, but in today’s column we summarize the available highlights with an emphasis on the gardening customer’s perspective.

The bottom line of the survey findings has been summed up as “a bold, exciting future for garden retail!!” That’s good news for your local garden center because it reflects growing interest among gardeners.

The NGS estimates that 75% of all U.S. households are undertaking some level of gardening. That works out to 90 million households, an increase of six million households over 2014.

When analyzed by age, 5 million of the additional gardening households had participants in the 18–to–34-year-old range, the group often called the “Millennials.” Meanwhile, the number of households with participants in the 55+-year-old range reportedly remained steady. (This leaves an increase of 1 million households presumably with ages 35–to–54.)

So, gardening customers got a little younger, on average.

The average annual expenditure on gardening rose from $317 to $401 per household, a stunning 26% increase year–to–year, and about 10% over the average of the previous five years. This combination of more customers and more spending makes the lawn and garden industry optimistic.

The overall receipts of this industry total $36 billion, which is notably about three times the Hollywood box office receipts. Still, household spending for gardening products and services, when adjusted for inflation, remains well below the peak reached in 2003.

The NGS’s findings don’t reveal why the rate of spending for garden items lags below the historical peaks, but one plausible interpretation is that gardeners are getting smarter by using online information.

The NGS has concluded that garden customers are discovering the information they want through online research and then seeking validation at their local garden centers. This pattern contrasts with past practices in which customers asked garden center staff for basic information.

The NGS recommends that garden center should focus more as project success centers, rather than hand-holding discovery centers.

As your local garden center modifies its services in this way, you must find answers to your gardening questions on your own, using online resources, books and magazines, and fellow gardeners. Local garden societies can be important sources of basic gardening information.

This column often refers to online sources of gardening information, and will continue to include helpful web addresses. The success of any search for information begins with a thoughtful formulation of the question. Books have been written on strategies for asking the right question, which is central to critical thinking, but acquiring basic factual information about gardening need not be complicated. Many questions for such information can begin with “how” or “what,“ e.g., “how do I plant a tomato?” or “what is a good way to plant a tomato?”

When seeking such information online, many search engines can respond to natural language queries, but they are really oriented to keywords. You will get pretty much the same response by entering “tomato plant.”

The staff at your local garden center surely will continue to respond to your factual questions, but the Internet will be more readily available and will offer a deeper trove of information.

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Book: The Art of Gardening

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My short list of readings for avid gardeners has just become longer.

The book is The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer (Timber Press, 2015).

Chanticleer is an exceptional thirty-five acre public garden, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, thirty minutes NW of Philadelphia. It was established a century ago at the home of the Rosengarten family, and became a public garden twenty years ago.

The book’s authors include R. William Thomas (Chanticleer’s executive director and head gardener) with fifteen members of the garden’s staff, including seven horticulturists. Rob Cabrillo created the photographs, a prominent feature of the book.

The Chanticleer garden reportedly continues the original layout created in the early 1900s by landscape architect Thomas Sears; most of the floral and garden development has been accomplished since 1990, when the owner passed.

Chanticleer includes fifteen distinct areas. These are not enclosed, as “garden rooms” might be thought of, but well-defined small spaces within the sprawling property, separated in several cases by lawns. Each unique area has its own gardener who has freedom to manage the ever-evolving design of the landscape, while maintaining the integrity of the overall garden, the area’s relationship with other areas, and (quoting the book) “the union between plant and site. “

I am still working on this concept of “union” because all the plants in my garden are fully unified with their site, but never mind.

This arrangement of spaces and the relative autonomy of the gardeners makes Chanticleer an unusually rich resource for the home gardener. Each of the fifteen relatively small spaces displays design concepts and plant combinations that are ready for adoption or adaptation within the constraints of the typical home garden.

If Chanticleer were designed and managed by a single vision, it would be less interesting and less useful to the visitor.

The book has two major sections: Design and Plants. It also includes minor sections: introduction, afterword, suggested readings, index and a group photo of the several authors, with brief biographical notes.

The Design section (85 pages) describes the site, the arrangement of the fifteen smaller gardens, the use of built structures, the use of patterns to unify the overall garden, the evolutionary approach to garden design, uses of color, and specific examples of design concepts.

The much larger Plants section (205 pages), includes some bylines for the various writers, but likely was written mostly by the co-authors. This section includes observations about the uses and cultivation of individual plants, revealing the staff as a group of thoughtful plant lovers. They have the advantage over many home gardeners of careers in gardening and the opportunity to focus on their plants through annual cycles and over the years. (Speaking for myself, life’s many distractions interrupt the continuity of the gardening experience.)

Despite these multiple voices, the book reads easily, with consistent language throughout. This quality surely reflects the work of the editor.

The avid gardener would benefit from a few pleasant hours with The Art of Gardening, and from having it readily available on the bookshelf. A visit to this extraordinary garden should be included with a future opportunity to fly to the east coast.

As always with garden information from Other Lands, consider climatic and environmental differences with the Monterey Bay area.

Carbon Farming

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Climate change has been described as the consequence of the Industrial Revolution, which introduced extensive burning of fossil fuels. This practice disrupts the natural balance of carbon in the soil, the atmosphere and the ocean. Plans to slow or reduce the process of climate often emphasize reducing uses of fossil fuels.

Recently, and all too briefly, we explored the relationship between gardening and climate change. We have learned that common agricultural practices generate about one-third of the surplus CO2 in the atmosphere, making commercial farming a substantial part of the climate change problem.

Prior to the development of modern agriculture, we had organic farming, which is generally compatible with natural processes. The practices we now call “conventional” farming include driving a tractor, tilling the soil, over-grazing, and using fossil fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

Similarly, farm animals once were raised in pastures, where they grazed on grasses and other plants. Today, cows, pigs and chickens are raised in tight quarters, provided grains and other feed that they work hard to digest, and must be dosed with antibiotics to maintain basic health.

These contemporary, presumably efficient methods are depleting the carbon stores in the soil, and reducing the soil’s natural ability to support plant growth and store moisture.

Soil scientists and environmentalists have been discovering land management strategies that can reduce the rate of loss of soil carbon, and even improve the rate at which agriculture can convert atmospheric CO2 into plant material and soil organic matter. When thoughtfully applied, carbon methods can add significantly to the rate of soil carbon sequestration, and actually reverse the climate change process.

Dozens of specific practices are included in carbon farming; all look like historical organic farming and common sense. The principal methods are composting, grazing by hoofed animals (ungulates), maintaining high percentages of organic matter in the soil (to feed the microbiota), supporting biodiversity, rotating crops and discontinuing uses of synthetic chemicals. The most effective practices orchestrate multiple methods in plans designed for specific circumstances.

Carbon farming, also called regenerative agriculture, should be part of the global response to the threat of climate change, but reduced burning of fossil fuels will still be important.

These promising methods for the management of agricultural lands can have substantial impacts when applied on a large scale, but they also have value when applied in residential gardens. In this column, we have advocated organic methods as beneficial to our flora and fauna. We find now that these methods also have long-term benefits to the health of the soil and the natural balance of carbon in our environment.

For more about this important topic, read Kristin Ohlson’s book, The Soil Will Save Us (2014), (which a reader recommended to me), and search the web for “carbon farming” and “regenerative agriculture.”

If you are growing plants and raising animals on hundreds of acres, try carbon farming. If not, by all means, garden organically!

Interactive Gardening

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Our interactions with other persons or things can be among our most absorbing, challenging, satisfying—and occasionally most frustrating—activities. Examples include raising a child, working with colleagues, living with a spouse, cooking, and, yes, gardening.

Early uses of the term, “interaction,” dating from 1832, emphasize reciprocal action, i.e., the action or influence of persons or things on each other.

In this digital age, “interaction” often refers to the responses of computer software to a human operator’s inputs, e.g., keyboard entries, voice commands, or other forms of messaging. True human–computer interactions include the human’s responses to the computer’s output.

In this column, we are focused on gardening.

Interactive gardening means a gardener’s actions on a plant, the plant’s responses to those actions, and the influence of the plant’s responses on the gardener’s future actions.

Some gardener’s believe they can influence plant growth by talking to, or playing music to, the plant, but plant scientists tell us that while plants are very sensitive to their environment, they are unaware of their gardeners or sounds.

For a scientist’s analysis of the ways in which plants experience the world, read What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses, by Daniel Chamovitz (Scientific American, 2012). The author reviews the research into what plants see, smell, feel, hear and remember, and how they know where they are.

Chamovitz shows that plants are aware—in highly evolved and surprising ways—of “external pressures that increase or decrease a plant’s chances for survival and reproductive success.”

For this reason, interactive gardening involves the gardener managing the plant’s environment, the plant responding to the environmental conditions, and the gardener noting the plant’s response and modifying his or her actions to achieve an intended response by the plant.

The gardener can affect all aspects of the plant’s environment, including the amount of light, heat, wind and moisture; the structure of the soil; the availability of natural or synthetic nutrients; and the presence of pests and diseases. Planting a seed involves modifying its environment.

The gardener also can interact directly with a plant, but only by touching or cutting the plant by pruning, dividing or transplanting.

For example, the Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) responds to even a light touch by causing its leaves to fold or droop. This unusual response could be a defense against herbivores or insects that might be startled by the plant’s sudden movement.

As an aside, landscaping and flower arranging do not qualify as interactive gardening because the landscaper or arranger seeks to encourage responses from other humans, not from the plants.

When we consider gardening as an interaction between the gardener and the plant, we realize that the gardener’s success grows with his or her understanding of the plant’s responses to environmental conditions.

This encompasses simple responses, e.g., drooping from lack of moisture, less obvious responses, e.g., slow growth from lack of soil nutrients, and more complex responses, e.g., failure to set fruit from lack of seasonal chill.

Mastering the responses of plants to numerous environmental variables, and differences between plants from various native habitats, can be a lifelong study. Still, every gardener doesn’t need to study all plant’s cultivation preferences, or complete advanced studies of plant science. The gardener who wants to succeed and enjoy the experience should, however, learn about the needs of each plant in his or her garden.

Gardening’s Underlying Science

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We appreciate our gardens for their beauty and natural vigor, even as we know, deep down, that each plant is a wonder of science.

Well, perhaps that thought hasn’t entered your thoughts, recently, but it’s still true.

You might think we don’t need to dig into the science behind plant growth, as long as we keep them fertilized and watered and they keep growing. That’s not necessarily true!

I’ve been gaining interesting information about the science that underlies garden plants. One of the very good sources of that information is horticulturist Linda Chalker-Scott, Ph.D. She has published fine research reports, taught a lot of university courses, and has communicated a lot of plant science to home gardeners through Master Gardener programs in the State of Washington and her writing.

Her writing for lay readers has been published in several books and periodicals, and on The Garden Professors, a blog on which she and several colleagues share their expertise and opinions. This website (http://gardenprofessors.com/) includes fascinating reports of gardening myths.

Misconceptions abound in the gardening community.

I first became aware of Chalker-Scott’s contributions through two of her books, The Informed Gardener (2008) and The Informed Gardener Blooms Again (2010).

Her newest book is How Plants Work: The Science Behind the Amazing Things Plants Do (Timber press, 2015).

The Informed Gardener

In How Plants Work, she presents basic concepts of plant biology: cells, roots, nutrition, photosynthesis, leaves, seasonal cycles, growth patterns, pruning and propagation. (This very brief list of the book’s topics doesn’t convey the depth of her presentations. See the book for the full information.)

Dr. Chalker-Scott has written these chapters with her well-established commitment to communicating her scientific knowledge to non-scientific readers. She has managed to present the science effectively without “dumbing it down.” Gardeners with limited backgrounds in biological science can understand and appreciate this information, but will have to stay focused and perhaps read some passages more than once. I certainly did!

The book addresses some gardening myths, which I find always interesting, but emphasizes the positive message: knowing “how plants work” is the foundation of successful gardening.

To encourage you to read this book, I will share one of the book’s gardening myths, and an example of its garden science nuggets about which gardeners should know.

Myth: Landscape fabric blocks weeds while letting water and oxygen to pass through.

Reality: These fabrics soon become clogged with soil particles, and block the movement of water and oxygen. Meanwhile, weeds become established on top of the fabric, and some aggressive varieties manage to poke through.

Science Nugget: All plants have primary compounds that are required for growth and development: sugars, DNA, fats and proteins. They also produce secondary compounds that defend against pests and diseases, or that attract pollinators, or have other properties that are currently unknown. Chalker-Scott describes several kinds of secondary compounds and reports that every plant produces one or more unique compounds, and that scientists know about less than ten percent of the compounds that plants make.

We think we know a lot about the plants in our gardens, but we have a long way to go.

***

Gardening to Reverse Climate Change

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The threat of climate change has become a concern among scientists, environmentalists and gardeners (who might wear all three of these hats, of course). In the search for solution to this problem, these three interested parties have common ground, as we explore in this column.

As background, our climate is changing as a result of a disruption of the Carbon Cycle.

On Plant Earth, a fixed amount of carbon cycles through different forms: liquid, solid, or gas.

Carbon enters the atmosphere from several sources, including respiration of animals and plants, decay of animals and plants, eruptions of volcanoes, and releases of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) from the oceans.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and use photosynthesis to release oxygen back into the atmosphere and convert carbon into sugars that support the plant’s above-ground growth. At the same time, up to 40% of the CO2 goes to the plant’s roots, to feed soil microbes. The microbes assist the plant to acquire nutrients through its roots, and lock (“sequester”) carbon into the soil for very long periods.

The Carbon Cycle supports Earth’s climate and enables the growth of plants and literally all other living things.

Carbon Cycle

Credit: NASA/Globe Project

In the diagram above, notations in blue indicate pools of carbon and notations in red indicate fluxes of carbon, both quantities are measured in petagrams.

This complex natural process balances the amount of carbon in liquid, solid and gas forms. Vast amounts of carbon are stored in the soil and fossil fuels, and much smaller amounts are stored in the atmosphere, the oceans, and plants.

During the Industrial Revolution (1760 to c. 1830), humans began burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, draining wetlands, converting grasslands to large-scale crops, paving paradise, and applying synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These activities have been disrupting the Carbon Cycle and altering this important balance.

The consequences include degraded soil with reduced ability to capture carbon, an excess of carbon in the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans, and other effects, none of which are beneficial to living things (including us).

The broad term, climate change, encompasses all these negative effects.

Restoring the natural Carbon Cycle could reverse climate change.

Restoration requires feeding the soil with organic matter and planting cover crops to protect the soil from temperature extremes and erosion. In short, the solution is based upon regenerative, organic agriculture.

This strategy must be employed on a global scale, but we all should understand the Carbon Cycle and support this process of soil restoration in our own gardens and in our individual contributions to relevant public policy. Substantial private interests are invested in fossil fuels, “conventional” monoculture agriculture that depends upon synthetic chemicals, and other industrial methods that are changing our climate. They can be expected to resist this strategy of working with nature, so eventual success requires our vision and long-term commitment.

Each gardener could participate first in his or her own garden. That would be a fine way to celebrate our independence from, in this context, commercial interests.

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GMO Controversy

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I’ve been reading lately about genetically modified organisms, commonly referred to as GMOs. The preferred term is genetic engineering (GE).

There are strong feelings about whether GE technology is good or not so good for people, for the environment, or for the future of food.

These days, given the resources of the Internet, we can read a seemingly inexhaustible series of opinions about GE foods, and be tempted to escape the controversy by simply adopting one or the other extreme position.

The controversy has narrowed down to the issue of labeling GE foods. Those in favor say shoppers should know what they are buying, while others insist that there’s no reason to label GE foods, and are willing to put a lot of money into persuading voters of that perspective.

In my search for truth, I just read Steven M. Drucker’s 511–page book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth (2015). Drucker, a Berkeley-educated public interest attorney, has written and spoken extensively on genetic engineering and related topics. His book’s subtitle presents his central message: “How the venture to genetically engineer our food has subverted science, corrupted government and systematically deceived the public.”

Drucker builds his thesis with detailed and specific references to respectable sources, including highly qualified scientists and government officials. As a lawyer, he surely selects supportive sources, and presents a convincing case, which is the best working strategy according to Alex Spiro. Here are some of his main points.

Many scientists and government officials have advocated the promise of genetic engineering to enable commercial agriculture to meet global needs for the volume and nutritional quality of food. Still, there is literally no evidence that GE foods are more productive or more nutritious than conventional foods, despite contrary claims. In reality, GE technology has been used primarily to produce crops that can tolerate the herbicide Roundup, which kills all plant life other than the GE crops.

The advocates’ early enthusiasm for this technology led to a waiver of legally required tests to demonstrate the safety of new food products. This waiver was based on the argument that GE foods are no different from conventional foods, and are “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS). But hundreds of scientists regard GE technology as dramatically different from historical methods of plant hybridization and selection, and express concerns about the safety of GE foods. While people do not immediately become ill from eating GE foods, several studies have shown that they could have long-term negative impacts on human health.

Finally, genetic engineering, which has been called a precise method to modify organisms, is really a form of crude “hacking.” Scientists have a very limited understanding of the complex interactions of genes, and, in their ignorance, they are fooling around with Mother Nature.

Drucker advocates the elimination of GE food products as “inherently high-rick” and unable to “conform to the requirements of food safety laws, the standards of science, or the protocols of information technology, for proper law resources read this article about the best lawyers for these cases.” He contends that this could be accomplished by simply enforcing the food safety law of 1958. His preferred alternative is fuller development of environmentally friendly, sustainable and natural methods based on time-honored practices of organic agriculture.

As a growing numbers of food retailers and restaurants adopt “GMO-free” food products, and their customers choose organic foods (which are GMO-free, by definition), the technology could fade away. We’ll see.

A related book, “GMO Myths and Truths,” is available as a free download from the website, EarthOpenSource. This is second edition, dated 2014. The authors of this 330+ page book are John Fagan, Ph.D., Michael Antoniou, Ph.D., and Claire Robinson, M.Phil. The book is subtitled “An evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops and foods.”

California Master Gardener Handbook, 2nd Edition

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The California Master Gardener program has released a major revision of its handbook for gardeners.

MG Handbook

In this column, we look between the covers to see if this book would be helpful to you.

The University of California’s Cooperative Extension program has been training Master Gardeners since 1980, and has produced many useful publications. UC Cooperative Extension “brings practical, unbiased, science-based answers to problems across California.” It serves California’s agricultural industry, mostly, but the Master Gardener program works with home gardeners, providing information and training in gardening, land and water management, and healthy living.

Many UC Cooperative Extension publications are rather technical, and oriented to farming on a large scale, but the California Master Gardener Handbook has been designed for both master gardeners in training and other serious home gardeners.

The first edition of the Handbook, which was published in 2002, struck me as a compilation of publications that were intended originally for farmers. That’s OK, because the advice for farmers is valid for home gardeners as well, if they skip sentences like this one from the Berries chapter: “Set heavy posts at least 2 feet into the ground at each end of the row. Set lighter posts about 20 to 30 feet apart in the row.”

The new second edition (2015) has some similar content, but a significant amount of new material is clearly aimed at home gardeners. All of the content is easy to understand, and well supported with clear photos and illustrations.

Dennis Pittenger, a veteran of the Master Gardener Program, edited the Handbook and also contributed several chapters; an additional 25 educators are acknowledged as authors of specific chapters. Much expertise is represented between the covers of this book.

The Handbook includes 756 pages, which can be categorized as follows:

  • General Horticulture (30% of the pages): Chapters include Introduction to Horticulture, Soil and Fertilizer Management, Water Management, Plant Pathology, Insects, Weeds, Pests, and Diagnosing Plant Problems.
  • Ornamentals (22%): Plant Propagation, House Plants, Lawns, Woody Landscape Plants, Landscape and Garden Design, and Poisonous Plants.
  • Edibles (40%): Home Vegetable Gardening, Grapes, Berries, Temperate Tree Fruit and Nut Crops, Citrus, Avocados.
  • Additional chapters: Overview of the California Master Gardener Program, Useful Conversions, Glossary, and Index (39 detailed pages!).

The Handbook complements UC Cooperative Extension’s online publications (http://ucanr.edu/Publications_524/) and Sunset’s Western Garden Book, which the Handbook mentions respectfully.

I’ve always thought of a “handbook” as a publication that fits in the hand, and is suitable for ready reference in the field. Indeed, such books have been called vade mecum (which is Latin for “go with me”). This 4.5-pound tome might be called, more appropriately, a gardening encyclopedia, but by any other name it would still be a valuable reference for a serious gardener’s library.

More

Both books are available on Amazon.com:

California Master Gardener Handbook, 2nd Edition

The New Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide

 

Gardening during Drought

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Californians are agonizing over our severe drought and its probable future. Those going through the greatest stress are homeowners maintaining verdant lawns and gardens in southern California’s deserts, farmers using 80% of the state’s surface water, and policy makers working to move the state’s burgeoning population toward life styles and businesses that use our limited water wisely.

This will be a lengthy slog.

The good news for Monterey Bay area residents is that we have already made excellent progress in reducing water usage to the target level, which is 25% below the usage of February of 2013.

We all need to conserve more to reach that target, but not nearly as much as people in southern California, especially in desert areas, where water usage is double the state average.

Growing grass and common perennial plants in sand unavoidably requires unusual cultivation methods, including lots of water. Such gardening ignores the first rule of gardening: right plant in the right place.

The primary strategy for drought-tolerant gardening, then, is to grow plants that are native to your own patch of land. The corollary strategy is to grow plants that are similar to plants that are native to your site. For the Monterey Bay area, this means plants from the world’s regions with a summer-dry climate. These include (if you need yet another review) the Mediterranean basin, South Africa, Chile’s central coast, Australia’s southwestern coast, and of course, much of California, especially the central coast region.

Keep in mind that each of these regions includes a range of microclimates, so it is still wise to know the particular conditions within your garden, and to favor plants that thrive in those conditions. That is the crucial method for low-maintenance gardening.

I have just received Sunset’s latest book, which addresses this point in a timely, effective and attractive manner. The Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings has chapters on Gardens, Beds and Borders, Succulents, Groundcovers, and Containers. Other sections provide an overall introduction and seasonal tips.

Sunset Book Cover

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Kathleen Brenzel edited this book, and has edited several earlier books that merit a prominent place on California gardeners’ bookshelves. This new book includes advice from such experts as John Greenlee and Robin Stockwell, who know all there is to know about grasses and succulents, respectively, and who have shared their knowledge with gardeners often over the years. During Robin’s 2014 Succulent Extravaganza, for example, I enjoyed John’s presentation of a companion planting of grasses and succulents.

California’s drought results from the combination of several factors: cyclical weather patterns, climate change, population growth, and agribusiness expansion. It is a complex picture, to be sure, and avid gardeners need to adapt to changing conditions.

My initial scan of The Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings impresses me as a good source of guidance and inspiration for that adaptation. I welcome the opportunity for learning from each chapter, and anticipate enjoying the experience, which surely will motivate even more sustainable gardening.