BOOKreviews

Beautiful Flowers: A Guide and Workbook for Growing, Using, and Enjoying Gorgeous Garden Blooms Author: Janice Cox Publisher: Ogden Publications List Price: $17.99 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3GEtbBi Reviewer: Melinda Thompson Flowers: they’re used for more than just making the space beautiful. In Beautiful Flowers: A Guide and Workbook for Growing, Using, and Enjoying Gorgeous Garden Blooms, Janice Cox writes about how flowers can be used for self-care, eating, and crafts. The first chapter of the book, “Beautiful Flowers,” is a comprehensive guide about how to care for flowering plants and plant them together. In between the instructions for types of soil to use for plants, pruning the flowers, and arranging the plants in the garden, Cox says there is a language that flowers have told throughout history. This guide is beginner-friendly, explaining all the important things that new flower-growers need to know. “Nearly every feeling and emotion can be expressed with flowers,” Cox writes, before listing the Victorian England meanings of giving someone flowers. Some examples include Forgetme-nots meaning true love memories, yellow Tulips meaning you make me smile, and Hollyhock meaning ambition. Throughout the book, Cox says the best part about flowers is giving them to people and seeing the resulting smiles on their faces. The other chapters detail the different ways the reader can make something to give to someone they love. The next few chapters are both beginner and experienced gardener-friendly. The second chapter, “Natural Beauty with Flowers,” tells more than just how flowers can light up a room. It describes how you can light up your self-care routine. There are recipes for cleansers, toners, bath bombs, and more. Cox starts with the medicinal and care benefits of common flowers. After explaining the benefits, she explains how a gardener can organize their garden based on those benefits and how to care for the plants involved. The last section of the chapter provides detailed recipes using common garden flowers like roses, lavender, and chamomile. The third section of the book, “Edible Flowers,” explains how common flowers that can be found in the yard can be used to make food or tea. Some of these include roses, sunflower, basil, and mint. Then Cox presents recipes for flower foods, teas, and other drinks that can be shared with friends. These include flower salad spring rolls with shrimp, candied flowers, and lavender margaritas. In this section, Cox makes sure to include where the gardener can find some ingredients that are hard to find in regular grocery stores or where you can find those obscure ingredients in grocery stores. The fourth chapter, “Floral Crafts,” first explains how gardeners can create fun and interesting bouquets. There’s a color wheel chart to help with choosing the color of the flowers. Then, Cox describes different ways to make these interesting, like using mason jars or empty cans as vases or a wooden floral arranger to make simple bouquets. She also details how to make wreaths and use flowers to dye clothes. The most beginner-friendly part of this book is the inclusion of blank pages for journaling. Gardeners can jot down notes about what flowers can be eaten, growing lessons learned, and sources and use of edible flowers. “Creating any number of skin- and body-care products, culinary delights, or crafts with fresh and dried flowers brings a level of satisfaction and joy to any gardener,” says Cox. “Sharing those gifts is just another way to spread the joy.” I highly recommend this book for the flower-lover in your life. o

Melinda Thompson is a senior journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, with a vocal performance minor and a concentration in women’s studies. She is an intern this fall with Washington Gardener.

The Plant Clinic: Healing with Plant Medicine Author: Erin Lovell Verinder Publisher: Thames & Hudson List Price: $29.95 Order Links: https://bookshop. org/a/79479/9781760761721 and https://amzn.to/3DW8mzB Reviewer: Charlotte Benedetto The Plant Clinic is a pretty, even glamorous, but also practical, if somewhat strange, book. It is sort of a cross between a coffee table book and a cookbook. Designed to lie flat, with expensive-seeming, sophisticatedly bound matte paper, it is a recipe compendium and a glossary of ingredients. The design and layout are both informal and traditional. Luxuriant illustrations bleed over the edges of this finely made “utility softcover”—designed for use in the kitchen. Photography in The Plant Clinic, by Georgia Blackie, is very well-crafted. Dried nettle steeping in a Mason jar is lit in a natural, neutral light, and shot as glamorously as a pouting model. Even modest ingredients like fennel seed, chia, or powdered herbs are photographed with the sensuality of mashed lipsticks or spilled pearls. A simple and soothing palette permeates the book, providing a calming and modern feel. Attention to esthetic detail is a hallmark of this book. The recipes are organized by treatment area (“The Gut,” “Hormone Health,” “Immunity”) and sections are both artistic and crystal-clear, with cleverly printed side index tabs, designer paper, and again, sensually photographed ingredients on nearly every page. Teas, confections, foods, and decoctions, along with pastes and lotions used externally, and “vapor” or steam applications, are all covered. Here there be tisanes, potions, tonics, “oxymel” (healing honey compounds), and “electuaries” (paste-like herbal cataplasms) from entry-level to exotic.

This work includes a comprehensive glossary and many common-sense recipes, so much that it might make a fine workbook for elementary herbalists. Goji berries (Lycium barbarum) and chia seeds (Salvia hispanica) are well-known health-food store standards, but use of certain other ingredients, like the gentian root (Gentiana lutea in the “Spiced Herbal Bitters” recipe for gut health), has yet to hit the mainstream. Any practitioner or herbal grower looking to do market research on healing compounds would be wise to peruse the “Remedy Recipes” that pack The Plant Clinic. Growers take note—notoriously immortal weeds skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) and horsetail (Equisetum spp.) may eventually make their way back into common consumption. The one flaw in The Plant Clinic is the final section (“First Aid Kit”) because it is a little too short—although I’m sure many people would agree that an herbal or plant-based first aid kit could be an encyclopedia unto itself. Ingredients are both global and local, but there is something for everyone here—most Washington Gardener readers have access to the more familiar ingredients like fennel seed, caraway seed, dry coriander seed, and lemon peel, and some of us may even grow featured ingredients such as ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) and chicory (Chichorium intybus). Not everyone stocks chaga powder (the fungus Inonotus obliquus) or lion’s mane (Hericium erinaceus), but with a little planning and maybe a trip to Whole Foods, some of these ingredients are not that far-flung anymore. Protocols are listed for various symptoms and typical household complaints such as allergies, halitosis, eczema, and indigestion. Refreshingly, sections are dedicated to less-often discussed complaints familiar from many burntout modern readings. It is refreshing to see practical garden-oriented and planthealing protocols for grief, impaired cognition, and depression. The Plant Clinic is a beautiful book to thumb through and own. It would make a fine gift for any herbally oriented individual. o

Charlotte Benedetto is a writer, artist, and gardener living in Great Falls, VA. She is enrolled in the Northern Virginia Community College horticulture program and is an intern this fall with Washington Gardener.

Sustainable Food Gardens: Myths and Solutions Author: Robert Kourik Publisher: Metaphorphic Press List Price: $69.95 Order Links: https://amzn.to/30saSA7 and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9780961584887 Reviewer: Stacey Evers Author Robert Kourik started edible gardening in 1978, which has given him decades to experiment and hone his techniques. What he didn’t have was time to write a sequel to his 1986 book Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape—Naturally, mostly because he couldn’t start writing until he’d organized his files of scientific research: 200 books, 36 lineal inches of filing cabinet and at least 1,000 digital research documents. And then, the pandemic hit. With time on his hands, Kourik whipped his documents into order, then began writing, editing, and creating graphics for several hours a day. This immersion led him to realize that many gardening “facts” are not backed by science but are mere assumptions or myths. “[M]uch of the scientific research that I studied seemed to refute popular horticultural trends.” Curious, Kourik pivoted his focus to investigate the peer-reviewed and field study science behind permaculture. The result, Sustainable Food Gardens: Myths and Solutions, is a comprehensive, science-based review discussing which long-held garden practices will actually succeed in a home garden. It’s also a myth-busting guide—a tome, really, at 417 pages plus two appendices, 435 images, and a 5,000-entry index. I keep saying “science,” but don’t worry if your science skills are rusty. Kourik has a gift for inviting, relatable writing. He’s an experienced gardener who can (and does) converse with you about everything from the basics of sustainable gardening and container plants to the intricacies of drip irrigation, root systems, and natural fertilizers. The many easy-to-interpret charts and illustrations add valuable content, rounding out the reader’s understanding. Kourik is also a gardener who’s mindful of his impact on the soil, water, and wildlife around him. In every chapter, he teaches you how to protect nature and conserve resources—including how to save on your home energy bills by how you landscape around your house. Regardless of your gardening experience; adherence to sustainable practices; or preference for edible, habitat, or ornamental gardening, you’ll find much to learn in Sustainable Food Gardens. I know that I’m grateful that Kourik made such good use of his pandemic time; I look forward to the hours ahead of me, plumbing the depths of this book during our second COVID winter. o

Stacey Evers is the founder and chair of Hands On Harvests, a Northern Virginia nonprofit that teaches people how to grow food and makes it easy for gardeners to donate those surplus squash and tomatoes.