New England Gardening Books

  • Post published:03/05/2016
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Month by Month Gardening in New England
Month by Month Gar dening in New England

Who knows what weather tomorrow will bring? We are living in New England. No telling what the weather will be from one minute to the next. All I know is that we are getting closer and closer to spring, which means thinking about how soon we can possibly get out into the garden, and possibly wondering how long it will take us to feel that all of a sudden we are way behind in our chore

Charlie Nardozzi, author of Month-by-Month Gardening New England (Cool Springs Press $24.99) has recognized that some of us need help in planning our use of time and has created a month by month calendar of tasks that will keep every section of our New England garden healthy and beautiful.

For every month he gives advice about planning, planting and on-going care which includes watering and fertilizing, and finally solving problems like pests and disease. What makes this book so useful is his dividing each of these sections into specific advice for annuals, edibles, perennials, shrubs, and trees. This makes it easier for us to use if we don’t have every single category in our gardens.

Of course, having a chore schedule isn’t very helpful if we don’t have how-to advice on some of those chores. Nardozzi gives good instructions on planting trees and shrubs, on pruning, building a cold frame or raised bed, controlling tomato blight, aerating the lawn and many other tasks that are not only time sensitive, but may also require new skills.

Nardozzi covers a lot of ground (pun intended) and the book is well illustrated with excellent and clear photographs. His other books include Northeast Fruit and Vegetable Gardening and he has an excellent website www.gardeningwithcharlie.com.

Growing the Northeast Garden
Growing the Northeast Garden

If you want help choosing plants for your garden Andrew Keys, gardener, author and lecturer, has just written Growing the Northeast Garden (Timber Press $24.95) which provides information about the best trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, vines and grasses, as well as design suggestions that will make our gardens just what we have been dreaming of.

Keys begins with an overview of New England weather and soil conditions. Weather is unpredictable, but we can protect our most vulnerable plants by paying attention to the microclimates we may have in our gardens. In Heath our garden was on a southern slope where the winds blew the last frosts of winter and first frosts of fall down the hill leaving not even a kiss on my latest bloomers

Keys quickly launches into the best plant section with beautiful photographs by Kerry Michaels. This section presents a palette of different types of plants from trees, to annuals, those bright helpful plants that give us consistent bloom all season. We all know that each plant has a season when it is most interesting or spectacular whether because of bloom, or seasonal color. Knowledge of bloom times is certainly important if you are trying to have something blooming in the garden from early spring through the fall.

Many of the plants in Keys’ palette will be familiar, but others may come as a surprise. I always think of boxwood as a tender plant, but it is hardy in zone 4 which is minus 25 degrees. Likewise, European hornbeam which will grow into a very large tree, and yet it is often sheared and kept low and dense for a handsome hedge.

Grasses in the garden make me a little nervous. I fear they will take over. Keys offers a good selection of grasses that appear well behaved, but I will always be wary of Miscanthus grasses which grow and increase so rapidly.

Once you have gorged on beautiful images of plants that could inspire admiring glances from your friends, you will be happy to look at the section on design. Keys gives some basic design tips, but lets you see how these take shape in different northeastern gardens, each with a very different style and feel.

Finally there is a section on garden practice from building the soil, welcoming birds and butterflies and managing those less desirable creatures like squirrels and chipmunks. We love those ‘flying flowers’ like butterflies, but are less enthusiastic about the rodentia family.

For the Love of Everything
For the Love of All Seasons

Lastly, I want to mention a little garden calendar book, For the Love of All Seasons, which got lost in the mail on its way to my new address. Valerie Vaughn of Colrain did the line drawings to accompany a text by her good friend Geoff Allison who passed away last year. Allison was born blind, but he had an intimate relationship with the plants that he brought into his life and wrote about.

For the Love of All Seasons is a compilation of essays he wrote some years ago. He had an amazing knowledge of history and botany. He never mentions color, but his sensitivity to fragrance, texture, and sometimes taste are palpable. Always he is aware of the ‘aliveness’ of each plant.

Allison’s essays are interspersed with calendar pages, but when the days of 2016 have passed this modest book will have earned a place on your shelf, ready to refresh your own ideas of the ‘aliveness’ of the plants in your garden. It is available at McCuskers for $16 and at Collective Copies for $12.

 

Between the Rows   February 27, 2016

 

 

 

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