The Complete Container Garden

Rating:
Summary: Not enough for Part/Shade Gardening
Review: Beautifully presented, this book provides two different functions. The first part of the book is a standard introduction to container gardening, with information about how to plant pots, the order, and how best to arrange them. The author has some very nice instructional graphics to illustrate the steps, disembodied hands working in the dirt. The second and more interesting part of the book involved his breakdown of container plant types by color. Each main area of the color wheel is given a section, and plants for that color are described for spring, summer, and fall/winter. If you like to work and create your arrangements by combining color schemes, this will be very helpful. I'm still at the stage where a book like Hillier's `Container Gardening Through the Year' was more appropriate providing concrete examples that you can go out and put together. Joyce does do that for a variety of pots, indicating through pot-maps where things should be planted etc., but that's not the main thrust of the book it appeared. I did like the presentation and can understand the high rankings this work receives.

Rating:
Summary: Color Groupings Distinguishes This Work
Review: Beautifully presented, this book provides two different functions. The first part of the book is a standard introduction to container gardening, with information about how to plant pots, the order, and how best to arrange them. The author has some very nice instructional graphics to illustrate the steps, disembodied hands working in the dirt. The second and more interesting part of the book involved his breakdown of container plant types by color. Each main area of the color wheel is given a section, and plants for that color are described for spring, summer, and fall/winter. If you like to work and create your arrangements by combining color schemes, this will be very helpful. I'm still at the stage where a book like Hillier's 'Container Gardening Through the Year' was more appropriate providing concrete examples that you can go out and put together. Joyce does do that for a variety of pots, indicating through pot-maps where things should be planted etc., but that's not the main thrust of the book it appeared. I did like the presentation and can understand the high rankings this work receives.

Rating:
Summary: Great addition....
Review: Charleston South Carolina is a beautiful place, but the thing I like the best about that little city is the gardens. Every garden has containers, and every house seemed to have window boxes or containers on porches. The British also seem to have a penchant for growing plants in containers. The alleys that lie behind the houses in Royal Tunbridge Wells are loaded with potted plants.

It you are a potted plant fancier like me, this is the book for you. This is a fine book, a beautiful book, a heavy book. Physically, it probably belongs on the coffee table -- it's too pretty to take out back and smear with manure and sand as you try to replicate the various contained gardens. On the other hand, this book is destined to be outside, it's extremely useful in the garden.

Containers are not just for apartment dwellers with balconies. As my yard fills up with this and that, and I look for new ways to hold plants, I have looked up. Contained gardens can be plopped on the patio or into the middle of a patch, but they can also be hung or mounted on walls, porch or balcony railings, and under windows.

Containers can be the familiar red clay pot or the familiar red clay pot with a paint job. This book tells you how to paint your pots, shape your boxes, or mold your 'stone-like' containers. Almost anything can be a container with the right preparation.

And what to plant? This book indicates the only constraint is your imagination. To get your imagination going, the book contains multiple diagrams that show you which plants to use, how to plant them and other necessary instructions. The back of the book contains a long list of plants suitable for container growing. Each item in the list is described in several paragraphs.

The book gives you information for growing things all year round. I have been exchanging my pansies for summer plants every year, but next spring, I intend to grow bulbs in containers.

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous photos and brilliant ideas
Review: From small pots to window boxes to tubs and improvised containers,
color photographs display a staggering array of containers while the text discusses advantages and disadvantages from aesthetics to expense and durability.

Joyce gives instructions for decorating planters and choosing soil mixes, watering, pruning, propogating and winterizing.

Much of the book is devoted to particular plantings ? directions for alpine gardens, hanging cascades of fuchsia, late winter bulbs, foliage contrasts, various color arrangements. Each model planting is accompanied by a list of needed materials and plants and a planting diagram.

Joyce concludes with a descriptive and illustrated list of plants and foliage suited to container growing, arranged by color. Other lists include aromatics, shade-tolerant plants, pool plants, dwarf bulbs, flowering shrubs and more.
This is a comprehensive guide with lots of ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Not enough for Part/Shade Gardening
Review: I enjoyed this book but found it's primary focus was on "sunny" container gardening. Since I need to focus on part-shade and shade plants the book was not as helpful as I would have liked.

Rating:
Summary: WONDERFUL, and BEAUTIFUL guide to gardening
Review: I recently got married and decided that I wanted to start gardening. But, I don't have a garden. I just have a very large deck on our new apartment. I have always wanted to decorate a deck or patio and windows with beautiful flowers. I just haven't ever known how. I found this book at a local book store and it has all the information you would ever need to know to set up your garden without a garden. It has beautiful pictures of container arrangements. But the best part is that in addition to the pictures it has diagrams of how to duplicate the arrangement. The book has wonderful instructions for someone like me who doesn't know anything about gardening. I just took my book to my local nursery and showed them what I wanted. I took it home and now I have the beautiful deck I have always wanted. What a fun new hobby! I highly recommend this book. I bought another container gardening book by Rebecca Cole and sent it back. It just didn't have the helpful information that I needed like this book has.

Rating:
Summary: Essential for your garden book collection!
Review: This book has it all! It has practical tips for container planting, maintainence, topiary, and inspiration. It does emphasize ornemental plantings, but it really does offer a well-rounded approach to container gardening.
It has lots of eye-candy to boot! Who can beat that? The best of both worlds, informational, and artistic.
My only complaint is that it does not always say what the light requirements for the plants presented, but the container blue-print section makes up for that in some degree. A good staple for container gardening.