BOOKreviews

Plant Grow Harvest Repeat: Grow a Bounty of Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers by Mastering the Art of Succession Planting Author: Meg McAndrews Cowden Publisher: Timber Press List Price: $24.95 Order Links: https://amzn.to/39h9a8G and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781643260617 Reviewer: Hojung Ryu Self-grown and harvested food can be more sustainable, secure, and nutritional than store-bought food. In the intricate, sophisticated systems of the modern world, how do we efficiently plant, grow, and harvest in gardens? Plant Grow Harvest Repeat guides the reader step-by-step to preparing their garden plantings at the optimum growing season, and having longer harvest periods. In the beginning chapters, Meg McAndrews Cowden writes about succession gardens: where one can stagger the planting of seeds in order to have several harvests in a row versus traditional gardens. In addition to garden skills and techniques, Cowden emphasizes the importance of timing when it comes to successful gardening and harvesting. She explains different skills such as interplanting, staggering, vertical gardening, and more, and includes her own experiences as a beginner, making it personal and easy to follow her suggestions. Spacing should be distributied depending on plant size and height and calculated carefully to avoid crowding and overplanting, which can be detrimental to gardens. In the middle chapters, Cowden goes in-depth about each of the species that are commonly popular in food gardens, as well as native shrubs and edible fruit trees. Well-organized charts add useful visuals to the detailed text. Cowden also presents the types and times of succession in chart forms that are easy to follow. The last few chapters touch upon how to improve soil health and care for plants in extreme weather. This book is text-heavy, although it contains a decent amount of images, graphs, and charts. It is packed with valuable information for smart, successful gardening and harvesting. The author wrote this book during the pandemicn which also brings a unique insight into these exceptional times. Cowden describes gardening as a “revolutionary act.” This is a great book to have on your bookshelf, regardless of the level of experience, skills, and techniques you have as a gardener.

Hojung Ryu is a junior journalism and criminal justice double major at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. She is an intern this semester with Washington Gardener and is from Mahwah, NJ.

The Healthy Garden: Simple Steps for a Greener World Authors: Kathleen Norris Brenzel and Mary-Kate Mackey Publisher: Harry N. Abrams List Price: $29.99 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3FHpziZ and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781419754616 Reviewer: Andrea F. Siegel In The Healthy Garden: Simple Steps for a Greener World, Kathleen Norris Brenzel and Mary-Kate Mackey advocate for earth-friendly, wildlife-friendly, and people-friendly gardening. Their point: Healthy backyard gardens create healthy ecosystems that enhance people’s personal physical and emotional health and contribute to the health of the world, locally and globally. Gardeners are in a unique position, they say, to improve the soil with homegrown compost and mulch; grow their own food; add plants and trees to create food, shelter and habitat for wildlife; and help others learn how to do it. The book is divided into three sections in a logical progression: about the value and work that goes into organic, sustainable gardening: Healthy Garden, Healthy You, and Healthy Planet, with chapters full of ideas and mini-profiles of people who have heeded a call to action (including a local Marylander). The authors promote engaging people where they are. Can’t afford to rip and redesign your entire yard? Tackle a small patch. Plant in a recycled plastic pot and paint it if you want to beautify it—or not; the plant doesn’t know the difference. Start a compost pile. Grow wildflowers or arugula. Gardening is a healthy activity. The book provides food for thought in an understandable way, explaining with numerous examples and visuals. Photos of all kinds of gardens identify locations and plants. Readers can use the photos to decide whether they like that look, see what grows well together, and research the plants to learn which are right for them and their climate. More on the photos: Many are full pages, and they’re all coffee-table book gorgeous and can serve as inspiration for beginning gardeners and those who want to grow in a more sustainable way. Would you consider creating a stumpery? Maybe, if you saw a photo of one and learned a bit about it. Foodscaping? A lot of veggie plants are attractive, and who mandated that anyone has to plant them in rows? Enhance an outdoor setting with a mix of edibles—start with the easy ones;

one gardener recommends a short list. Raised beds? Easier on the back, many styles shown. Have extra plants? Teach your neighbors to garden and strengthen your community. Share extras from your harvest with a food bank and neighbors. Pull together to beautify your community by creating a flowering curbside strip. Plant to feed wildlife. Enhance the planet. Volunteer. These are all among ideas explained here, and they help this book—part of the recent crop of books about sustainable gardening—serve as a resource. The book promotes this thinking: Our experiences with the gardens we grow renew our appreciation for the communities they foster. Those can be insect, wildlife, neighborhood, and larger communities. Whether we are watching bumblebees grazing on our flowers, listening to birds chirp as they pick through our landscape, or wondering who would like some of our baseballbat-size squashes, a healthy garden can boost all communities.

Andrea Siegel is a master gardener in Maryland.

Garden Variety: A Novel Author: Christy Wilhelmi Publisher: William Morrow & Company List Price: $16.99 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3l9IKIH and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9780063113480 Reviewer: Beth Py-Lieberman Their love language was seed catalogs. When Lizzie first saw the ripple of Jared’s biceps pulse beneath his snug navy-blue T-shirt at the Vista Mar Community Garden and the glint of excitement in his eyes, she thought to herself “Shit, he’s gorgeous.” But immediately she placed him among the fly-by-nights without any true passion for the hard work ahead. As one of the garden’s section reps, Lizzie had seen this type before. “People started out with a newfound passion for gardening, but when the shininess wore off in three months time, she was left with an abandoned plot full of weeds and lost ambition.” “Gardening is not for the commitment-phobic,” she warned the carefree Jared. And there beneath a pomegranate tree, with two hummingbirds zipping by, the tension was palpable. Jared had already broken a strictly enforced garden rule when he casually reached into someone’s plot and broke off a leaf of lettuce and put it in his mouth. Lizzie, the long-standing plot owner, grim enforcer of the garden’s “Rules and Regs,” was certain the scofflaw wouldn’t last. The tension between Lizzie and Jared kicks off the fast-moving romp of garden-variety tales and adventures in Christy Wilhelmi’s first novel. The award-winning garden guru, who is the founder of the online Gardennerd and the author of Gardening for Geeks, among other resource-rich videos and podcasts, had long envisioned the story of Lizzie, Jared, and the other gardeners at Vista Mar as a screenplay before her friends convinced her that she’d written a novel. For anyone who has ever tried to herd a bunch of garden nerds into a community of hummingbird harmony in the face of relentless summer heat, fast growing weeds, cisterns run dry, veggie vandalism, and hot-tempered border disputes, Garden Variety makes for a hilariously good read. I have been running a community garden in downtown Silver Spring for the past decade. Our gardeners have turned what once was a crumbling parking lot at the corner of Fenton Street and Burlington Avenue into a pollinator’s oasis, where a sharp-eyed hawk culls the bunny population. Every summer in that delightful garden, wedged between the Home Court shoe store, car repair shops, and a medical marijuana dispensary, I face the management challenges of what I like to call “garden drama.” Yet, thank heavens, I have not had the pleasure of managing an on-again, off-again romance between two plot owners. For Lizzie and Jared, yes, it began with seed catalogs. When Jared reveals his passion for wild arugula and all the other “crazy seeds” he’d found in the pages of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog, Lizzie’s “pulse quickens” and before long, the pair make off for a midnight romp. “He led her by the hand down the hill. ‘We’ll hide behind the compost until the gate closer’s gone.’” While their love grows like the intertwining vines of a Blue Lake pole bean, trouble lurks at the edge of the Vista Mar Garden where the evil-eyed Kurt Arnold grows ever more furious by the plants and trees blocking his “untarnished, pristine” view. Kurt will pull strings at the mayor’s office and bring crisis to the haven on the hillside. No spoilers here, dear gardeners; you’ll have to get Wilhelm’s book to find out just what will transpire. But the garden-guru-turned-novelist just can’t help herself from offerings of good garden tips. Readers will literally read between the lines of this garden drama to garner best methods for starting seeds (press each cell down gently to compress the soil around the seed) and other smart reminders: You never need more than one zucchini plant, look for bulb fennel and avoid the invasive wild fennel, and stop watering your potato patch once the foliage dies back. As for Lizzie and Jared, can these two make a go of it? Jared, the rulebreaker, will surely test Lizzie’s strict “regs and rules.” But those rippling biceps just might draw her down that un-chipped pathway to where the birds and the bees frolic in the sun.

Beth Py-Lieberman is Smithsonian magazine’s senior museums editor. She gardens at home with visiting deer in Silver Spring, MD, and is the volunteer liaison for the Fenton Street Community Garden.

Note: These book reviews include links to Amazon.com and BookShop. org for ordering them. Washington Gardener Magazine may receive a few cents from each order placed after you click on these links.

How to Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round: Ultimate Guide to Vertical, Container, and Hydroponic Gardening Author: Kim Roman Publisher: Creative Homeowner List Price: $34.99 Order Links: https://amzn.to/3FLpmLB and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781580115773 Reviewer: Dorvall Bedford One of the biggest obstacles to any gardener who wants to grow their own food is the climate. Many edible plants are not suitable for every season, which limits what can be grown in each part of the year. However, it can be possible to grow anything at any time when a garden is brought indoors. In her book, How to Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round, Kim Roman provides a guide to anyone who wants to grow food in their own home all year. The book is in five parts: Getting Started, What Plants Need, Indoor Growing Methods, What to Grow, and Tips and Troubleshooting. Each part is also divided into three chapters each that discuss a multitude of topics, like indoor garden preparation, the importance of sunlight and supplemental lighting, and even hydroponic gardening. Roman touches on almost every aspect of indoor gardening imaginable. What makes this book amazing is that it provides the necessary advice for any beginner. For example, it discusses the costs of indoor gardening and gives estimated budgets for different setups. It also guides the reader through the process of getting their living space ready for the weight of a garden. Although this book is great for beginners and maybe intermediate indoor gardeners, it probably lacks details that advanced gardeners would want. A few times Roman says that a topic she is discussing will not be covered in depth. In the chapter about hydroponic gardening, for example, the book summarizes the different systems that exist but does not go into great detail about them. If experienced gardeners would like to learn more about advanced indoor gardening techniques, then Roman’s book would make a great starting companion to other books that cover such topics. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to grow a garden of edibles indoors. It cannot only help someone with knowing how to grow plants, but also provide a guide to budgeting and building a garden.

Dorvall Bedford is a journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an intern this semester with Washington Gardener. He is a native of Frederick, MD.

Confucius’ Courtyard: Architecture, Philosophy and the Good Life in China Author: Xing Ruan Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts List Price: $29.95 Order Links: https://amzn.to/3woRboB and https://bookshop.org/ a/79479/9781350217614 Reviewer: Jim Dronenburg Confucius’ Courtyard is not a garden book, and technically shouldn’t be reviewed here. However, it is a fascinating read. It uses a lot of Chinese terms, but by the end of the first chapter you’re used to that, and you start to realize (if you read it front to back with no deviations) what it’s talking about. Central to the book is the idea that Western buildings look ourward: Chinese buildings look inward to a courtyard, or multiple courtyards. This has repercussions in the mindset. The book then goes on to list earliest examples of the courtyard style, how it developed—over essentially 3,000 years. And how it affected the Chinese philosophy. It is, really, a philosophy book. There are a few mentions of plants in the courtyards, but only a few; a courtyard was not a garden. A garden was a separate thing. Granted, some courtyards could be planted, but by and large, the things that define a Chinese garden are different from a courtyard. The book goes into Chinese architecture as it involves this “inner-ness” of a courtyard, and how (and why) courtyards were placed in Chinese dwellings. While few of us would incorporate a courtyard in our homes rather than windows looking out from the house (nor be able to, unless we were building from scratch), the book is a trip to another realm as surely as a book about Chinese gardens would be. I like it very much; if you are curious, you probably will, too. If you can get it fairly cheap (and it’s a paperback afterall), I’d say, do it.

Jim Dronenburg is a retired accountant and now gardens full-time in Knoxville, MD.