Gardening with Shape, Line and Texture: A Plant Design Sourcebook Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a typical high-quality Timber Press publication, with heavy weight glossy pages and incredibly beautiful photos. I will definitely use this book as a resource to go back to time and time again while I plan my gardens. However, since the author is British, the book is skewed mostly to English gardening (sorry Arizona residents)and there is no mention of conifers at all. How can someone leave out the pyramidal shapes of spruces or the exclamation points of Skyrocket junipers?? And how can one omit weeping Atlas cedars, ground-hugging Blue Chip junipers or conical Alberta spruces? This is a HUGE hole in a book about line and texture in garden design. The author organizes perennials, trees and some shrubs nicely into differing shapes, but since most American gardens contain some kind of conifers or evergreens for "year-round" interest, the book isn't as useful as it could have been.

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Hardy Bamboos: Taming the Dragon Review

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(More customer reviews)As a relatively ignorant gardener on the topic of bamboos, I was looking for a good book for gardeners (opposed to scientists) on the topic of bamboos to possibly incorporate into my temperate garden (Central PA, USDA Zone 6). Comparing this book to 'Bamboo for Gardens' (A highly recommended book based off of other customer reviews as well as several online bamboo nurseries), I found this book to be a much better read for the temperate gardener than the former.
In 'Hardy Bamboos', Paul Whittaker tells us many wonderful and personal stories about his experiences growing bamboo. I find highly personal accounts such as this a joy to read because they bring gardening to life. Furthermore, these firsthand experiences really help in the bamboo plant entries. Although 'Bamboo for Gardens' does provide sufficient information on the culture of each bamboo (i.e light requirements, max. height, min. temp. hardiness, etc) 'Hardy Bamboos' goes even further. In each entry, Whittaker also includes a pencil sketch to more specifically describe the overall habit of each bamboo (i.e. tall and stately vs. tall and arched, etc), measurements from his garden regarding actual bamboo height and spread at different ages as well as numerous observations that he's made reguarding specific varieties over the year. These details and measurements made this book more useful for me than 'Bamboo for Gardens' with regards to figuring out how a bamboo will grow and look in my garden. However, I should point out that 'Bamboo for Gardens' goes into much more scientific background on bamboos and includes both the temperate and tropical bamboos. Because of this, I find that 'Bamboos for Gardens' makes a better overall bamboo reference book.
But for those of us who live in temperate regions and wish to learn more about how to grow bamboos outside in our gardens, I found 'Hardy Bamboos' to be the better, more garden-detailed book.

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