Product Description

Pamela Crawford has created a complete guide to simple container gardening designed for anyone who has ever killed a plant. It includes illustrated instructions to create gorgeous, fool-proof container gardens that even you can t kill! This book introduces blue ribbon plant combos that you plant in the spring and just add water for the entire growing season. That’s right: no trimming, no fertilizing, and no spraying for up to seven months! Learn the 48 easiest plants and how to arrange them into 70 fabulous container recipes.

About the Author

Pamela Crawford, author of six gardening books, is one of the best known container garden experts in the country. In addition to writing three of her six books on the subject, her work has been featured on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens publications as well as in Southern Living, HGTV Magazine, and over fifty newspapers. As an expert in her field, she has appeared on the Fine Living Network, Fox News affiliates and numerous local TV shows. Pamela Crawford has a masters degree in landscape architecture and has designed over 1500 gardens

From Publishers Weekly

McGee (Basic Herb Cookery) and veteran gardening writer Stuckey (Gardening from the Ground Up) share their expertise and experience in the art of container gardening. Armed with this manual, frustrated apartment dwellers can indulge their passion for growing edible things. If there is an available balcony, porch, front or back steps, according to the authors, growing produce in containers can be easy and rewarding. With some limitations, it is even possible to grow foods in a window box or on an indoor windowsill. This compendium of practical advice includes detailed information on the types of containers to use, equipment needed, the right soil, when to plant which seeds and how best to deal with problems such as too much or too little sunlight. They also explain more sophisticated techniques like succession planting, whereby ongoing seasonal planting takes place in the same container. This can yield a harvest of peas in early summer, tomatoes in late summer to early fall and kale that will grow into winter. Included are mouth-watering recipes for harvested container crops. Written for the beginner as well as for those with a background in gardening, McGee and Stuckey’s directions are comprehensive, clearly written and frequently inspiring. Illus.

Product Description

With few exceptions-such as corn and pumpkins-everything edible that’s grown in a traditional garden can be raised in a container. And with only one exception-watering-container gardening is a whole lot easier. Beginning with the down-to-earth basics of soil, sun and water, fertilizer, seeds and propagation, THE BOUNTIFUL CONTAINER is an extraordinarily complete, plant-by-plant guide.

Written by two seasoned container gardeners and writers, THE BOUNTIFUL CONTAINER covers Vegetables-not just tomatoes (17 varieties) and peppers (19 varieties), butharicots verts, fava beans, Thumbelina carrots, Chioggia beets, and sugarsnap peas. Herbs, from basil to thyme, and including bay leaves, fennel, and saffron crocus. Edible Flowers, such as begonias, calendula, pansies, violets, and roses. And perhaps most surprising, Fruits, including apples, peaches, Meyer lemons, blueberries, currants, and figs-yes, even in the colder parts of the country. (Another benefit of container gardening: You can bring the less hardy perennials in over the winter.) There are theme gardens (an Italian cook’s garden, a Four Seasons garden), lists of sources, and dozens of sidebars on everything from how to be a human honeybee to seeds that are All America Selections.

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From Publishers Weekly

This lushly illustrated and exhaustive gardening reference, an update to the 1989 original, is sure to gratify greenthumbs all around the U.S.: comprising three main sections (the plant selector, the plant catalogue and the plant dictionary), it’s an excellent resource for anyone looking to fashion a beautiful and environmentally sustainable garden. The plant selector points gardeners toward flora appropriate to their environmental or aesthetic needs (e.g., plants that do well in sandy or alkaline soil, make good windbreaks or have aromatic leaves), while the plant catalogue, organized into sections by type (perennials, shrubs, bulbs, water plants) and boasting thousands of photographs, delves into greater detail about the characteristics of individual species. Each section is helpfully organized by seasons of “interest” and plant size or color: the yellow asphodel is a medium yellow perennial that looks its best in spring, for instance, while Gentiana septemfida is a large blue rock plant whose best months are autumnal. The dictionary lists more than 8,000 plants, from abelia to creeping zinnia. For the garden enthusiast, this volume will likely prove as indispensable as a good trowel.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

If only one gardening resource is purchased this year, let it be this book, a revision of The American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (1989). Tightly packed into a single volume is nearly everything that amateur landscapers and gardeners need to consider for outlining, designing, and planting their outdoor growing areas.

Two indispensable tools, the 2002 USDA plant hardiness zone map, upgraded to 15 zones, and the 1997 American Horticultural Society plant heat zone map, appear on the front and back endpapers. Of utmost importance is the “How to Use This Book” section, which explains how best to navigate through the charts, symbols, color codes, abbreviations, and special features of the text. Following this, the arrangement of information resembles the organized subconscious thought process associated with the planning and preplanting seasons. “Creating a Garden” takes the reader step-by-step through the entire process of creating an appropriate landscape and garden design. Everything is to be considered–plot size, style, structure, proportion, texture, colors, plant selection, and the year-round maintenance, appearance, and growth factor. Basically, this is how the professionals do it. “The Plant Selector” offers advice and recommendations for particular sites or uses. The main portion of the encyclopedia, “The Plant Catalog,” is divided into 10 sections (for trees, shrubs, roses, perennials, rock plants, cacti, and more). Within each section, plants are arranged by size, season of interest, and color. Each description includes botanical and common names, portrait, plant size (height and spread), shape, cultivation and hardiness zones, color range, and toxicity.

Whether one is planning a full-scale garden, a postage-stamp garden, or simply a container garden, the plant catalog has the appropriate selection. The book’s final section, “The Plant Dictionary,” compiles more than 8,000 readily obtainable plants for temperate zones, with full descriptions for 4,000 of these not already covered in the catalog. A glossary completes the text. Authoritative, beautifully designed, and lavishly illustrated (but not to the point of overshadowing the text), this hefty practical gardening encyclopedia deserves far more than a mere glance. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Review

“…the most complete book on the subject you are likely to find.”

Backwoods Home Magazine