Tag Archives: Book Review

Inspiring Landscape Ideas

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I’ve been pouring through the new edition of the Sunset Western Garden Book of Landscaping: The Complete Guide to Beautiful Paths, Patios, Plantings and More. This book is hot off the press, having been published in February of 2014. It complements the Sunset’s New Western Garden Book (9th edition, February 2012), which is about plants.

The book provides over 600 color photographs of gardens in the western states, with ideas for home gardeners and landscape professionals. It is organized under five headings: Gardens, Structures, Plants, Finishing Touches, and Planning. Each section visits numerous topics, illustrating each in one-to-eight pages of comments and captioned photographs. The text identifies almost all plants that are shown, and the excellent index lists them all as well.

Each topic could motivate the reader to seek detailed information in other sources.

Editor Kathleen Norris Brenzel notes that the book is primarily about inspiration, with an underlying theme of earth-friendly, sustainable design. In a brief introduction, landscape architect William R. Marken defines sustainability as basic to the “new golden age of landscape design,” which has grown out of Thomas Church’s four principles:

  • Unity of house and garden;
  • Function, serving household needs;
  • Simplicity, considering both costs and aesthetics;
  • Scale, relating the parts of the landscape.

Sustainability involves judicious uses of water, fertilizers and pesticides, as well as native plants, earth-friendly materials, and attention to the landscape’s climate, topography, soil and exposure to sun and wind. This book endorses sustainability, but avid gardeners will need other sources for practical advice.

The book’s greatest strength takes the form of striking photographic vignettes of exemplary landscapes. The photos show mostly nicely groomed small areas and even individual plants. Every garden has shortcomings from time to time but why would we want to see those?

The scenes shown in the book are consistently contemporary and relatively upscale, many with pools, lakesides and beachfronts Rather than presenting a documentary exploration of average landscapes, the book offers glimpses of inspirational settings that a reader could translate into his or her own environs.

Consider Church’s Scale principle when installing an assertively modern element in a traditional garden. (A friend recently persuaded me to install a huge surplus mirror in my garden. I like it, but I’m still reflecting on the aesthetics.)

This book is a great source of forward-looking ideas for your home’s landscape, and could encourage a fresh approach to your garden.

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To pursue an interest in contemporary landscaping in the western United States, a good place to start is Thomas Dolliver Church’s seminal work, Gardens Are For People (San Francisco: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1983). This book is widely available in public libraries and in book stores that reserve shelf space for classics as well as today’s best sellers.

A brief introduction to Church’s work as a landscape designer and academician is available the Wikipedia page for Thomas Church. His work included several private residences in Santa Cruz county (including his own home), and overseeing the master landscaping plan for the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Designing With Succulents

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Gardeners who become interested in succulent plants might become a bit puzzled by their unfamiliar character. They often bloom, but their flowers are short-lived and less important than their forms and textures. They grow in unexpected ways, sometimes with branches and sometimes without. They might seem native to hot, dry environments, but some thrive in partial shade and are even subject to sunburn.

Confused?

Many books about succulents are reference works, focusing on genera and species, but providing little guidance on how they can be grown successfully, propagated, displayed in the garden, or incorporated in creative works of art and craft.

Enter the succulent gardening expert, Debra Lee Baldwin, and her new book, Succulents Simplified: Growing, Designing and Crafting with 100 Easy-Care Varieties (Timber Press, 2013).

Baldwin describes this book as a prequel to her two earlier books, Designing with Succulents and Succulent Container Gardens. The new book is an overview and guide for novices in the world of succulents, and an introduction to design ideas from Baldwin and other specialists.

The book is organized in three parts. “Enjoying, Growing and Designing with Succulents,” begins with an appreciation of succulents’ shapes, textures and color, presents basic methods for the cultivation and propagation of these plants, and offers core concepts for designing succulent displays in containers and in gardens. This part alone will add greatly to the novice’s confidence in working with succulent plants.

The second part, “How-to Projects that Showcase Succulents,” includes step-by step instructions for eight imaginative craft projects using succulent plants or cuttings. Each of these projects could be varied by using different plants or accessory items, and thus does not constrain the crafter’s creative expression.

In the final part, “100 Easy-care Succulents,” Baldwin describes her 100 favorite succulent plants, based on her practical experiences in growing, propagating, and designing with succulents, as well as in teaching others how to succeed with these plants.

Large clear photographs show the plants, demonstrate design concepts and explain the development of craft projects. The photos, by the author and other succulent gardening specialists, are great resources for gardeners who learn from visualizing plants.

Baldwin expresses her enthusiasm for succulent plants, shares her extensive experiences in growing and designing with them, and provides ideas and tools gardeners need for enjoyable and successful work with succulents.

Succulents Simplified will be a valued addition to the gardener’s bookshelf.

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The craft projects in this book are as follows:

Succulent Cake-stand Centerpiece – A display of succulent cuttings on an elevated plate

Succulent Squares – Symmetrical plantings in home-made shallow square containers

Living Picture Vertical Garden – Hanging displays of  succulents in boxes up to 18″ x 24″

Low-light Dish Garden – Succulents selected for low-light situations

Hanging Basket of Mixed Succulents – Using a wicker basket as a hanging planter

Succulent-topped Pumpkins – Growing succulents in a hollowed out pumpkin

Succulent Topiary Sphere – Techniques for a spherical planting of succulents

Special-occasion Succulent Bouquet – Using succulents in a corsage or boutonniere

Teaming with Nutrients II

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This column was planned to provide a closer look at Jeff Lowenfels’ new book, Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition. I confess that I have read only the early chapters, due partly to other demands on my time and partly to the book’s demand for concentrated study.

In other words, Lowenfels gives this subject the scientific detail it deserves and that approach requires slow reading.

The book opens with chapters on The Plant Cell, Some Basic Chemistry and Botany for Plant Nutrition. It then proceeds to The Nutrients, Water Movement Through Plants, and Nutrient Movement Through Plants.

The four remaining chapters address The Molecules of Life, The Importance of Soil Testing, Factors Influencing Nutrient Availability, and What and When to Feed Plants.

I’m still reading, but my early assessment of the book has two parts. First, the text offers clear but not easy reading. Second, it provides basic science that is fundamental to successful gardening.

We can approach gardening as an aesthetic exercise, choosing and arranging plants to provide a pleasing display. If they succeed, we are delighted; if they do not, we either move them to spots that might be more hospitable, or discard them in favor of other trials.

If we approach gardening from the more scientific approach of Lowenfel’s Teaming with Nutrients (and his previous book, Teaming with Microbes) we can achieve very high degrees of success and plants with vigorous good health. And good health in plants means more beautiful foliage and blossoms, and stronger resistance to diseases and insect pests.

There is a middle ground. This is the territory of “green thumb gardeners” who succeed because they enjoy intuitive knowledge but don’t know why their plants flourish.

I respect green thumb gardeners and I am grateful for the occasions when my efforts qualify me to join their ranks temporarily.

But perhaps we prefer that our gardens hold a measure of mystery!

Most garden books emphasize gardening’s aesthetic aspects; Lowenfels’ book provides a rare example of plant science and nutrition from the perspective of a dedicated gardener.

Mark Your Calendar

As you consider adding this book to your reading list, consider these events for avid gardeners:

• Annual Iris Rhizome Sale I, Monterey Bay Iris Society, Saturday, August 3rd, (yes, today!), Deer Park Shopping Center, Aptos;

• Annual Rhizome Sale II, Monterey Bay Iris Society, Saturday, August 10th, Aptos Farmer’s Market at Cabrillo College, Aptos;

• Annual Show, Monterey Bay Dahlia Society, Saturday, August 31st, 1:00–5:00 and Sunday, September 1st, 10:00–4:00, Soquel High School, Soquel.

Teaming with Nutrients

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Over two years ago, I reviewed an exceptional book on gardening in two of these columns. The book is Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis (Timber Press, 2010). That book uses readily accessible language to introduce gardeners to the microbial life that sustains healthy plants. It remains today an uncommonly scientific perspective on gardening and a valuable resource for all gardeners.

Now, the principal author of that book has released an equally valuable companion work: Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardeners Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (Timber Press, 2013). In this book, Lowenfels provides easily understood explanations of the chemistry, biology and botany involved in how nutrients get to plants, and how they contribute to the plant’s health and vigorous growth.

Common knowledge indicates that nitrogen is responsible for strong stem and foliage growth, phosphorus aids in healthy root growth and flower and seed production, and potassium is responsible for improving overall health and disease resistance.

Many gardeners employ a fairly rudimentary approach to plant nutrition, and often adopt one of the following major perspectives on the subject.

The Balanced Fertilizer Group doses all plants with a chemical fertilizer with equal parts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, represented by the symbols N, P and K, e.g., a fertilizer labeled “10–10–10.”

The Customized Fertilizer Group uses chemical fertilizers that have varying percentages of these most important nutrients, depending on the cultivation objectives. For example, Osmocote’s Indoor/Outdoor Fertilizer, labeled 19–6–12, focuses on strong top growth and overall health, and less on root growth.

Both of these groups use more nitrogen than their plants really need, while unintentionally delivering excess nutrients that wash into waterways and harm aquatic ecosystems.

The Organic Fertilizer Group relies on fertilizers composed of organic plant or animal matter. These fertilizers include commercial products, manures and plant materials that a gardener composts in his/her own garden. These fertilizers also could be described in terms of N-P-K ratios, but compared to chemical fertilizers they act more slowly and over longer periods, and are friendlier to the environment.

The No-Fertilizer Group includes gardeners who add nothing to their gardens in the belief that plants will grow in the same soil year after year without depleting the nutrients. This is an error, as the garden’s declining performance demonstrates eventually.

In this book, Lowenfels offers deeper understanding of the major and minor plant nutrients and delivers the necessary science in a conversational style that most gardeners will appreciate.

Next week’s column will review Teaming with Nutrients in more detail and (no surprise) recommend reading this book as an investment in your long-term success in gardening.

Quick and Easy Gardening

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When selecting a gardening book, look for content that aligns well with your needs and interests. That might seem like advice from Mr. Obvious, but it is easy to be drawn into material that is too specialized or too fundamental in terms of your gardening goals.

Many gardeners share an interest in low-maintenance gardening, so that is has become an inside joke for landscape designers and contractors.

In fact, several factors influence the level of effort that a garden requires. Certainly, landscape size and plant selection are significant contributors to the maintenance task.

Another very important factor that can impact the time and effort required is the gardener’s knowledge of gardening. Simply stated, if you know what to do and when to do it, your efficiency goes up, your error rate goes down and your successes multiply.

So, how does one acquire that knowledge? One way is to spend a lifetime with hands in the dirt and heightened awareness, but there are shorter roads to expertise.

If you regard yourself as a novice, you might enroll in Gardening 101, but such courses can be hard to find and time-consuming.

A good alternative is Sunset Publishing’s 2013 book: The 20-Minute Gardener: Projects, Plants, and Designs for Quick and Easy Gardening, edited by Kathleen Norris Brenzel.

Despite its title, this book does not present a schedule for gardening in 20-minutes a day, but does provide good basic information on many aspects of gardening, so that one could use his or her time efficiently and effectively.

The first 40-plus percent of the book deals with Setting Up Your Space; Quick Fixes; Inspired Ideas, Easy Projects; and Techniques. Many sections within this part of the book begin with an action verb: Choose Easy-Care Plants, Keep Plantings Accessible, Plant Seasonal Containers, etc. This style amounts to setting clear objectives, always a good first step in getting work done.

The next section, which equals nearly half the book’s pages, presents brief descriptions of plants. There are countless gardening books that list and describe plants (gardeners apparently love lists!); the value of this section rests on the shortness of its plant lists in each of several categories. In this way, the book focuses attention on garden-worthy, easy to grow plants, but minimizes the pleasures of discovering and trying less familiar plants.

Such adventures might not be the novice gardener’s highest priority.

The remaining pages provide useful information and a good index.

Overall, the book offers clear and reliable gardening advice that could help the novice gardener establish the knowledge base for low-maintenance gardening, and lead to productive and satisfying gardening experiences. The 20-Minute Gardener is valuable resource for the targeted readers.

Enjoy your garden!

Growing Edibles in Modules

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Spring has arrived! Our days grow longer from the Vernal Equinox (March 20) until the Summer Solstice on June 21. This season inspires gardeners to focus anew on their gardens.

To be sure, avid gardeners have diligently pursued dormant-period priorities and planted before the rainy season, and their landscapes are now in good condition. But many have taken a break during recent months.

This is the time when gardeners aspire to planting vegetables mostly for the pleasure of seeing edibles develop in their gardens. A vegetable patch might or might not save money, depending on how it is planned and implemented, but it reliably satisfies gardeners of any age and is particularly gratifying for kids.

For novice gardeners, however, creating a vegetable garden can be a daunting prospect. It often seems like a lot of work and mysterious requirements, and the impulse evolves quickly to “maybe next year.”

Fortunately, we have great new resource for just this situation: the 2nd edition of Mel Bartholomew’s classic garden book, “All New Square Foot Gardening.” Earlier versions were published in 1981 and 2007, and this new edition expands upon those bestsellers.

The result is an exceptionally clear and complete explanation for an efficient, cost-effective method for growing vegetables in the home garden.

The insight for square-foot gardening is while growing vegetable in rows works well for commercial farmers, home gardeners could use their space better and meet their food needs more accurately and efficiently with modular “square-foot” gardening.

The basic plan is a raised bed, four-feet square, with sixteen planting beds. Each one-foot square can be planted with one large vegetable, such as broccoli or cabbage, or up to sixteen smaller vegetables, e.g., onions or carrots.

The book includes multiple variations: repeating the basic plan as needed for a large family, adding a trellis for vining plants, planting on a patio or balcony, etc.

Bartholomew describes each step of garden development in detail, with lucid photographs. The process is easily applied by most gardeners, and the author’s website www.squarefootgardening.org/ offers more information and a range of useful products.

If you have postponed your desire to grow vegetables, this book will help you to discover a satisfying and successful adventure with edible gardening. If you are already gardening in rows, square-foot gardening will help you to create a more efficient, more manageable approach.

Enjoy your garden!

Books of Gardening Essays

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Compilations of newspaper garden columns make enjoyable books. After a garden writer has generated weekly garden columns for several years, he or she often realizes that those columns could be redefined as essays and republished in book form.

Newspaper garden columns usually are time-relevant, and books based on them are almost always organized with reference to the four seasons.

Another characteristic of such compilations is their breadth of topics, ranging throughout the multi-faceted world of gardening, with each essay only seasonably related to those that come before or after.

Thirdly, books of garden essays present the author’s personality or attitudes more clearly than garden books that focus on a single genus (e.g., the rose) or a select group of garden-worthy plants (plants for shade), or a gardening technique (pruning).

Some compilations of essays are not organized seasonally, but have some other structure. One example is Green Thoughts (1981) by Eleanor Perenyi, and reprinted in 2002 for the Modern Library Gardening Series. Her book includes seventy-two essays listed alphabetically, from Annuals to Woman’s Place, an eloquent and impatient perspective on women in the history of gardening.

Compilations based on newspaper writing occasionally achieve the status of classics of the genre. Examples include Vita Sackville-West’s series of four books: In Your Garden (columns from 1946–1950); In Your Garden Again (1951-53); More For Your Garden (1953-55); and Even More For Your Garden (1955-58). Her columns, written for England’s The Observer, are marked by her extensive knowledge, deep enthusiasm and lively writing style.

Another classic of this type is Washington Post columnist Henry Mitchell’s The Essential Earthman (1981), which was followed by One Man’s Garden, and Henry Mitchell on Gardening. His works are beloved for sharp observations, humorous adventures and shrewd horticultural advice.

A new book of newspaper columns on gardening is Carolyn Singer’s The Seasoned Gardener: Five Decades of Sustainable and Practical Garden Wisdom (Garden Wisdom Press, 2012). Her essays, which are organized by month, bounce through an extraordinary range of gardening topics. Indeed, many essays touch on several related topics. A thorough index supports searches for topics of current interest.

Ms. Singer’s essays were written originally for The Union, the newspaper for Grass Valley, California. She is also the author of the award-winning Deer in My Garden series. Her writing style conveys her personal love and deep knowledge of gardening, and presents solid facts with a light and readable tone.

The Seasoned Gardener serves well as both a practical reference and a satisfying wander through many aspects of home gardening. Reading a randomly chosen chapter for pleasure could very well inspire the reader to pursue a new idea in the garden. That provides a reliable measure of quality for a gardening book.

Landscaping with Succulents

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The many gardeners who appreciate succulent plants will have two informative events—with plant-buying opportunities—in September, so this is a good time to plan ahead.

Let’s start with two information fragments, for the record:

  • all cactuses are succulents, but all succulents are not cactuses, and
  • succulents, found in many different botanical families, are simply plants that store moisture.

The first event will be the Annual Show and Sale of the Monterey Bay Cactus and Succulent Society. This occasion will be in the large patio of Jardines Restaurant, 115 Third Street, San Juan Batista. It happens from 9:00 to 5:00, Saturday, September 15th and (9:00 to 4:00, Sunday September 16th. Hint: make a luncheon reservation when you first arrive.

The second event, on Friday, September 28th and Saturday, September 29th, will be the Second Annual Succulent Extravaganza!,at Succulent Gardens: The Growing Grounds. This sprawling nursery for succulent plants is at 2133 Elkhorn Road, Castroville (near Moss Landing; check it out on Mapquest or Google Maps). The schedule will be 9:00 to 4:00 on both days, plus a BBQ from 4:00 to 6:00 on Friday. The schedule of speakers will be posted soon at sgplants.com.

When gardeners see the vast arrays of succulent plants at these events, they might experience the immediate reaction, “What fascinating/beautiful/striking plants!” and the slightly delayed reaction, “How could I use these plants in my garden?”

The aesthetic reaction could happen repeatedly while viewing a large display: succulents take many forms, size and colors, and are particularly striking when in bloom. This response involves the gardener’s own idea of attractiveness, so we will leave it to the individual.

The planning reaction relates to both the gardener’s personal preferences and his or her unique environment for new succulent plants. For these reasons, landscape design must be an ongoing local project, but still there are a few principles to consider.

There are two major categories of landscaping with succulents: succulents alone and succulents with companion plants (also known as “mixed beds”). We could identify countless additional categories of landscaping with succulents, including container gardening with succulents, but let’s start with these two.

There are many books and websites that provide detailed information on succulent plants, but very few that offer insights into landscaping with succulents. One book that does this very well is Dry Climate Gardening with Succulents (1995) by Debra Brown Folsom, with John Trager, James Folsom, Joe Clements, and Nancy Scott. The authors, all connected with the world-class Desert Garden at The Huntington Botanical Gardens, consulted with experts from six other gardens to produce this exceptional reference. Look for it today in your public library and on Amazon.com.

Enjoy September’s two big succulent events.

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“Succulent-only” Landscape Designs

The design of a landscape—or a garden bed—limited to succulents still involves basic decisions before the selection of individual plants.

One option would be limit to the bed to a single species. A mass effect can bring interest to the landscape, particularly when the bed is a feature within the larger picture. Having multiple specimens of a single species focuses the viewer on the details of the plant.

In some gardens, we see beds devoted to essentially random groupings of succulents, with no apparent relationship to one another. There are succulent plants in 60 different plant families, divided into 300 genera that include many succulent species. Visit the website of The Succulent Plant Page for more information on this point.

This “succulent universe” presents a very large number of possible combinations of plants, suggesting that a thematic approach of almost any description would elevate the design from hodgepodge to something more comprehensible to the viewer.

Variations of the “succulents only” design include a collection of plants within a genus, from a geographic region, or from a selected plant community. Each of these variations provides a degree of satisfying coherence to the design.

Additional thematic possibilities for such a design might emphasize combination of form, blossom color or foliage color.

Landscape Designs that Combine Succulents and Companions

According to the authors of Dry Climate Gardening with Succulents, the designer’s objectives for combining succulents with non-succulents might include providing contrast, counterpoint and accents, bringing out the best in both the succulents and the companion plants, or providing interest during periods when the succulents are not in bloom.

In any event, the designer’s first consideration should be to ensure that the companion plants have cultural requirements that are compatible with the succulent plants. Generally, this means bright light, minimal water with good drainage, good air circulation and balanced fertilizer during the growing season. These requirements orient the designer to the selection of xerophytic shrubs, i.e., plants that are adapted to a dry habitat.

This consideration leads the designer away from lush tropical plants, because they have different cultural needs and simply don’t look natural together with succulents. While it is always possible for a creative designer to find interest in unlikely combinations, most will do well by separating succulents and tropicals.

A large number of drought-tolerant plants are suitable as companion plants in a succulent garden. Indeed,there are many succulents that grow well with less than full exposure to the sun, so the number of drought-tolerant plants that thrive with partial exposure to sunlight could be added to this list.

The best companion plants for succulent gardens, however, are desert shrubs and trees. They have very similar cultural requirements, many similar physical characteristics, and in some cases different physical characteristics that provide a welcome counterpoint to the succulents. As an example of a desirable difference, Dry Climate Gardening with Succulents offers the Baja Fairy Duster (Calliandra californica), an evergreen Mexican shrub with brilliant red feathery blooms. This book recommends many more non-succulent plants for the succulent garden.

Ultimately, aesthetic considerations should guide the designer in the selection of companion plants for succulents. When possible, bring a candidate plant to the succulent bed in a pot to assess how it would look when planted. As always, this will be the individual gardener’s decision.

Landscaping with succulents, with or without non-succulent companion plants, offers the garden designer an intriguing list of challenges and opportunities. Enjoy your garden!

 

Cut Flowers, Three Ways

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People, like bees, are attracted to flowers, always for beauty (and occasionally for food).

We enjoy flowers in our gardens, but we want them indoors, as well. Americans buy some ten million cut flowers a day. About eighty percent are grown outside of the United States and brought in by air, in a stunningly efficient transition from field to vase.

Amy Stewart told the story of the global flower industry in Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful (Algonquin Books, 2008). Her fascinating book explores “the startling intersection of nature and technology, or sentiment and commerce.” According to one reviewer, Flower Confidential reveals so much about the technology and chemistry of the flower biz that it “may compel us to return to something purer, more local.”

Stewart’s fellow garden writer, Debra Prinzing, responds to that vision in The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers (St. Lynn’s Press, 2012).

Prinzing clearly favors emerging alternatives to the $40 billion dollar floriculture industry, which focuses on uniformity and durability. In her view, “factory flowers” may seem close to perfect, but they offer little or no scent, a maximum of preservatives and pesticides, and by the time they reach your vase, a relatively short life. She writes that they “have lost the fleeting, ephemeral quality of an old-fashioned, just-picked bouquet.”

The alternative she applauds is the nascent industry for producing cut flowers that are sustainably grown and locally sold. The 50 Mile Bouquet profiles a series of small-scale organic flower businesses, mostly on the west coast, and operated mostly by couples that are inspired by nature and particularly by flowers.

Prinzing explores floral design, featuring imaginative individuals who advocate “green” floral design. Their arranging supplies do not include green foam, the main ingredient of which is a known carcinogen, formaldehyde.

A chapter on “The DIY Bouquet” explores flower arranging by amateurs who love flowers, including some who prefer their flowers in the garden, arranged by nature.

The final chapters address the role of florals in celebrations & festivities, and resources for flower growers and arrangers.

The book is a feast for all who enjoy having flowers in their lives and in their gardens. It is the product of a flower lover and gifted writer (and president of the Garden Writers of America, no less). This beautiful book also includes fine photographs by David E. Perry, whose pictures capture the book’s spirit and the commitment of many flower growers and floral designers that we come to know.

My third perspective involves designing and cultivating personal cutting gardens, and “The Gardener’s Dilemma.” Read on!

One of a gardener’s dilemmas (there are several) is whether to enjoy flowers in their natural state, in the garden, or to cut them for indoor display.

George Bernard Shaw said, “I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads and keep them in bowls of water around the house.”

He was one who prefers to enjoy flowers in the garden!

There is a solution to this dilemma: the cutting garden.

By definition, a cutting garden functions as a bloom producer. By comparison, a tropical flowerbed has the very different purpose of providing an attractive vista.
In planning a cutting garden, the gardener’s priority is to prepare an efficient growing ground, one that can be used to produce a large number of blooms with a minimum of effort.

This perspective leads the gardener firstly to selecting a site that receives at least six hours of sunlight each day, because plants that produce a lot of blossoms need full exposure to the sun.

The size of the site depends on how many flowers the gardener wishes to grow. A bed of just twenty square feet could accommodate a couple dozen plants.

An important consideration is that the bed will be fully accessible by the gardener, for preparing the soil, planting seeds or seedlings, mulching, weeding, and harvesting blooms. For good access, the bed should be no deeper than four feet, and accessible from both sides. A larger bed should have a path every four feet to provide equivalent access.

Because the cutting is intended to be productive rather than beautiful at all times, it could be located in a less prominent area of the garden.

Secondly, the soil in the cutting garden should be have soil that is not mostly sand, so it will hold moisture, and not mostly clay, so it will drain well. Stated differently, the soil should be good garden loam, with a balance of sand, clay and organic material. If your soil is less than ideal, dig in a generous measure of compost, or, for extremely poor soil conditions, consider installing raised beds and filling them with amended soil from a landscape supply outlet.

The third consideration is that the site should have easy access to water. A automatic irrigation system would be most convenient, but at least hose watering should be readily available.

Then, select plants that produce the flowers you want. A great many flowering annuals and perennials would be suitable for a cutting garden, so the selection is a personal matter. If you need suggestions, consider the nominations of Roger Cook, landscape contractor, visit the This Old House website and search for “cutting garden.”

Buy either seeds or seedlings, again depending on your preference. Seeds are less expensive; seedlings are easier and faster to grow.

Read the seed packages or plant tags to learn how large the plants will grow, how to space them, when they will bloom, and other useful information. You might want to select plants that bloom at different times, to provide cut flowers over a long period.

Place taller plants where they will not block your access or the sun’s access to the smaller plants. This might be in the middle, or on the north side of the bed.

Other placement issues to consider include grouping plants with similar sun, water and drainage needs.

After watering in the plants, plan on mulching the bed, providing regular water and weeding as needed. When the plants begin to bloom, deadhead the blossoms to enjoy them indoors and promote more blooms.

Enjoy your cutting garden.

A Rose by Any Other Name…

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At least one gardener has been motivated by my recent recommendation to learn the botanical names of plants in your garden. Wendy in Monterey wrote, “We’d like to turn over a new leaf and start learning the names of our plants. Can you recommend a book that would help us—with color photos, scientific and common names, and maybe a paragraph about the plant. We live in Monterey CA and have a variety of shrubs, trees, grasses, perennials, annuals, and rocks! Many thanks.”

My immediate recommendation is to get the 9th edition of Sunset’s indispensable reference, The Western Garden Book. This very recent publication includes hundreds of additional plants and illustrates plants with photographs instead of line drawings.

Finding a good information source is just the first step toward progress. Here are three ideas to make learning plant names more enjoyable.

1. Understand how plant names relate to other plant names

Plant names include two basic parts: genus and species. For example, Ceanothus griseus is the name for the Carmel Ceanothus, a native of the Monterey Bay area and one of dozens of species within the genus Ceanothus.

A given species might include varieties. In this case, we have Ceanothus griseus, var. horizontalis, with the common name Carmel Creeper.

A species or a variety within a species might include cultivated varieties, called “cultivars.” These are natural variations that have been selected for propagation because of their desirable features. The Carmel Creeper’s cultivars include ‘Yankee Point’ (narrower leaves and darker blue flowers) and ‘Diamond Heights’ (yellow and green variegated leaves, pale blue flowers).

Every genus also exists within a family. The genus Ceanothus is one of more than 50 genera within the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae). A family relative of the Ceanothus is the Rhamnus californica, the California Buckthorn or Coffeeberry.

2. Accept the reality that plant names change.

Taxonomists change plant names on the basis of DNA analyses and other methods. They either combine or separate genera (or other categories). Our current example, Ceanothus griseus has been changed recently to Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var. griseus.

Changes reflect refinements, so don’t fret!

3. Appreciate the meaning of plant names.

Many plant names describe a plant’s appearance. The genus name Ceanothus comes from the Greek “keanothus,” that referred to some spiny plant, and the species griseus is the Latin word for “gray.”

Some plant names refer to the plant’s discoverer. For the plant Salvia karwinskii (Karwinski’s Sage), the genus name comes from the Latin salveo, “I am well,” and the species name refers to the 19th century German explorer Wilhelm Friedrich Karwinsky von Karwin.

There are several books on the derivation of plant names. An online source is Michael Charters’ website, “California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations (www.calflora.net).

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I have just received my copy of Sunset’s 9th Edition of The Western Garden Book, and it doesn’t disappoint.

I have several previous editions of this very useful publication, so I could attempt a detailed historical analysis of its content, but I won’t because I prefer to address the here and now.

The section on Climate Zones has been expanded to include information for several western states. That broadens the market for the book, but I’m still most interested in the climate zone of my own garden and care little about what’s happening in New Mexico.

Every gardener should know the climate zone of his or her garden, the micro-climates within the garden and the composition of the soil.

The next section, called the Plant Finder, has lists of plants in three categories: Problem-solving Plants, Earth-friendly Plants, and Plants for Special Effects. These sections are valuable guides to the alphabetical list of plants (the book’s main section). Unless you already know the name of a plant, an alphabetical list can be frustrating. The Plant Finder helps the gardener find a plant for a given situation.

The last major section, Gardening, Start to Finish, provides brief landscaping and cultivation information. This is helpful, but a serious gardener will need more detailed information on these topics.

Finally, the book restores the index of common and botanical names. This index was missing from the previous edition, in favor of a novel approach to including common names within the main alphabetical section.

The new Western Garden Book is available through most bookstores, garden centers and Amazon.com (which has the best prices, as usual). I paid for my copy, so this brief review is unbiased, except by my previous reliance on this essential reference work.

Every serious California gardener’s library should include a well-read The Western Garden Book!

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Tom Karwin is a Santa Cruz resident; a UC Master Gardener; a member of several garden groups; and board member of the UCSC Arboretum Associates.