THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606210086
SECTION: HOME & GARDEN PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JULIA BRISTOW, SPECIAL TO HOME & GARDEN
LENGTH: 104 lines
SUMMERTIME, BLUE SKIES, puffy white clouds and flowers in bright and riotous bloom. What better time to choose a garden book or two to take along on vacation, read on your lunch hour or dip into in your own backyard?
Reader's Digest has come out with two new garden books produced in England on topics of universal appeal and usefulness. Some English garden books do not apply to our American situations. These do.
The first is ``The Gardener's Book of Color,'' with text and photographs by Andrew Lawson (1996, 192 pp., $32.95). If you are interested in improving the color scheme of your garden or container garden, there's a great deal here for you. The photographs are gorgeous.
The second is ``The Complete Book of Perennials'' by Graham Rice (1996, 240 pp., $32.95). This one is a winner for beginners and more experienced gardeners alike. If you want a garden with maximum bloom and longevity for minimum work and expense, perennials are the way to go. Particularly useful is the alphabetical listing of the best perennials available today with their special features and cultivation requirements.
Many's the time I have leaned over a fence in Williamsburg to sketch or photograph a garden or garden feature I wanted to think about. Now there's a wonderful book called ``The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg'' by M. Kent Brinkley and Gordon W. Chappell (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1996, 176 pp., $29.95).
It's a Williamsburg garden lover's dream come true. It contains histories, pictures and planting guides for 20 of the colonial capital's most interesting gardens, from the Governor's Palace to the Shields Tavern kitchen garden.
David M. Doody took most of the beautiful photographs. He and the co-authors are on the Colonial Williamsburg's staff.
Colonial Williamsburg also has just published what is essentially a picture book, ``Williamsburg's Glorious Gardens,'' with photographs by Roger Foley (117 pp., $25). Many a visitor will no doubt take home this lovely record of Virginia's lush green spring.
A book that comes from across the country but makes for an enjoyable reading journey is ``Further Along the Garden Path: A Beyond the Basics Guide to the Gardening Year'' by Ann Lovejoy with photographs by Mark Lovejoy (Macmillan, 1996, 247 pp., $40). The Lovejoys live on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, and all the gardens pictured are in that area. It's up to the reader to decide what information applies locally.
The book is written in a conversational style. My only complaint is that what appears to be an average annual minimum temperature chart on the USDA plant hardiness map is so tiny that it is illegible.
Do we gardeners really need another herb book? When it's as good as Susan McClure's ``The Herb Gardener: A Guide for All Seasons'' (Storey Communications, 1996, 236 pp., $29.95), we do. It will get you started on herb gardening, if you haven't already, or, if you have, it will keep you happily going. I especially like the Grower's Guide. About 50 herbs are photographed against a plain background to give you a clear look. It's a fine, easy read, my choice for a summer day.
There are armchair travelers and armchair gardeners, as most of us are with our seed catalogs and garden books in the cold winter months. Here are some books for the armchair traveler/gardener.
The first is ``One Hundred English Gardens'' by Patrick Taylor (Rizzoli, 1996, 216 pp., $40). The author selected his favorites from the 1,200 sites on the English Heritage Park and Garden Register, a register 10 years in the making.
Here are descriptions and photographs of gardens and parks, large and small, including my two favorite English gardens, Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire and Tintinhull House in Somerset. This book, with its glossary of locations, hours and phone numbers, should be invaluable to anyone planning a garden tour of England or who wants to keep memories of English gardens fresh and green.
Whether or not you've ever been to France, ``The Art of French Vegetable Gardening'' by Louisa Jones with photography by Gilles LeScanff and Joelle Caroline Mayer (Artisan, 1995, distributed in 1996, 195 pp., $35) will fascinate you.
If you're tired of the same old rows of vegetables, you'll find a hundred ideas for mixing your vegetables and flowers or for designing vegetable beds that will rival your flower beds in beauty and interest.
For instance, it suggests, ``among tomatoes, spaced 2 feet apart: purple basil, borage, rudbekias, and perennial phlox . . . around pepper plants, other sun-loving flowers like creeping verbenas, dwarf zinnias, and California poppies.'' Hampton Roads vegetable plots could be a lot more fun next year.
Finally, I highly recommend the newest releases in Pantheon's Garden Guide series, written in collaboration with leading professional horticulturists from more than 30 botanical gardens, arboretums and other public gardens in the United States and Canada. Published so far this year are ``Tropical Gardening,'' ``Water Gardening,'' ``Oriental Gardening'' and ``Trees.'' These soft-cover handbooks are about 220 pages each and cost $25. They provide the kind of authoritative, practical gardening information that is hard to come by.
In the introduction to the guides, editor Elvin McDonald says the series has three major philosophical points: ``Successful gardens are by nature user-friendly toward the gardener and the environment; gardening is an inexact science, learned by observation and by doing; and part of the fun of gardening lies in finding new plants, not necessarily using over and over the same ones in the same old color schemes.'' MEMO: Julia Bristow is a freelance writer and retired editor who gardens
in Norfolk and Quinby on the Eastern Shore. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos of book covers
Photos of book covers
Enjoy planting guides for 20 Colonial Williamsburg gardens.
Though written in Seattle, some advice is applicable here.
Find valuable information about English parks and gardens. by CNB