Book Review - The Gardener’s Palette

By Jo Thompson

A journey into color, this book with over a hundred selected color schemes will test your knowledge of what colors go together. Each scheme is two or three pages with a large photo and a plant list. It is hard to say if this is a reference book. Looking up say red,purple and apricot planting scheme is not easy as there is no real organization of the book. Or rather, I can’t figure out how this is organized. Maybe that will come to me on its second reading. 

Book Review - Shrouded in Light

 By Kevin Philip Williams & Michael Guidi

For the last few months I have been systematically reading my library of garden books.   With my morning cup of coffee I read front cover to back the many gardening books I have collected.

Book Review - Mien Ruys - The Mother of Modernist Gardens

 By Julia Crowford

    A good introduction to this gardener, designer, sometimes landscape architect.   Known for her simple shapes and clean lines, she utilized modern materials to create garden spaces for people to mingle with Nature.  

This make me think back to my visit to her home garden in Dedemsvaart in 2016 ==>>

Book Review - A Field Guide to California Lichens

By Stephen Sharnoff

I found this book at the Huntington Gardens gift shop.  I wanted to learn more about Lichen and which ones I see in my gardens and environs.

This made me start to take photos up close of those in my gardens.  This first I need to ID is on an old rose cane in Eureka Valley.

Book Review - The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book

By Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence

Since returning from England in 2023, I decided to stop reading the news every morning with my coffee and started reading my gardening books as my morning ritual.  I have not read most of my gardening books from cover to cover.  But since I changed my habit, I have finished over a dozen or more.   So I am starting a new series about my book collection.

First up a book I have had since my City College Horticultural days.  It is a simple premise that doesn't require a full book to understand although there are good ideas throughout, mostly for vegetable gardening.   Mulch your soil with hay and over a course of three years, you will see a dramatic improvement in your soil.  I am one that believes that I am really tending to the soil and the plants are on a separate level.