The No-Garden Gardener : Creating Gardens on patios, balconies, terraces, and in other small spaces

Rating:
Summary: Container gardeners beware.
Review: Several things turned me off about the book. First, it's seems very British for some reason. Second, it goes in to pages and pages and pages of assessing your situation, whether you are a blind gardener, "the importance of design", then gets into water gardens and water features, and raised beds. Suffice it to say that it didn't seem very geared toward the apartment owner with a 7x10 foot balcony!

It's not there isn't useful information in this book, but it's about plants in general, though. This is not totally geared toward the container gardener. I guess that's said in the subtitle: Creating gardens on patios, balconies, terraces, AND IN OTHER SMALL SPACES. About 85 pages into the book, about types of hanging baskets, window boxes and other containers. Then it gets into container design where you choose compatible plant partnerships. But even here there's a little trouble, because the illustrations show plants that are NOT IN CONTAINERS but in a garden setting. From there you get into soils, how to propagate the plants, how to control pests (suggests picking off caterpillars will do...ewwww!),

I needed more from this book. I needed a book on containers and tha plants that grow well in them. One that talked about a wide variety of plants, especially those that grow well in my zone. I could care less about the parts of a plant and stuff I had in biology. In the very back, where it talks about "lack of space makes this plant list no more than a suggestion." Well, if they hadn't filled it with [stuff] what was off-topic, there may well have been room to discuss more plants. The main problem with this book, in my opinion, is that it lacks focus.

Bottom line, I guess it depends on what you need out of this book. This book works well as a general plant care reference book, but if you need a book specifically on the special needs of plants in containers, I'd try another book. One that was more helpful to me, and one which I consider my own personal bible as far as container plants goes, is called Container Plants for Patios, Balconies, and Window Boxes by Halina Heitz, published by Barron's. I have plumbagos, and while there's no mention of them in the No-Garden Gardener, you'll find useful references to them there.

Rating:
Summary: Black thumbs be gone!
Review: This is probably not a book for more experienced gardeners... but luckily I'm not. The writing on the design aspect of the non-garden seems common sense (and it is), but the book is a real treasure for the beginning gardener and those of us who just have two left thumbs. This is because it includes basic guides on such diverse topics as: plant biology, planting (from rock gardens to hanging plants), caring for the plant, propagation and pest control. Guides to planting and plant maintenance include diagrams and step-by-step instruction for easy use. The book's best feature though is its lovely photography; the photos are intended to inspire the reader with ideas about the design of their no-garden garden.