Geoffrey Burnie

The format of this postcard-sized book is deceptive: it looks small, but there are 320 pages of information inside. This makes it difficult to open the book sufficiently wide to see the excellent illustrations (photographs and paintings both) which adorn the pages.

The book has a project editor, a designer (Suzanne Geppert: she did a fabulous job) and a consultant editor listed, but no author. As I perused it, I began to wonder if it may have been written by committee, possibly low-paid undergraduate students hired to fill in gaps on a checklist for each herb. The information about the plants' growth and hardiness was not accurate. Perhaps in San Francisco where the publisher is based, it doesn't matter so much, but here in USDA Zone 5 where so many plants are not winter-hardy, zone matters a great deal. "Zone 6-9" seems to be the compilers' default entry for that data slot; most of the plants that I've grown in my Zone 5 garden for decades and quite a few that grow wild in Zone 4 are categorized 6-9. So is English Lavender, which really struggles to survive here and is a genuine Zone 6-and-higher plant. They provide a zone map, which isn't very accurate even for its small scale, putting the entire lower peninsula of Michigan in zone 5. In the editors' favour, however, the map does continue across the US border into Canada (but not Mexico).

The book covers a lot of herbs not mentioned elsewhere, perhaps because other gardening authors confine their remarks to plants they have personally grown. Still, where else would you find information about growing Saffron Crocus? (It's hardy in zone 6-9, apparently. Haha.)

I would recommend this book to gardeners who live in the Bay Area and similar climate zones. It's a good place to start research and great for identifying plants -- my son in law decided to keep it for this reason. But double check the information with other more knowledgeable guides.… (mehr)

I can't recommend this book enough for people with no gardening skills who suddenly find themselves with a garden to maintain. It's simple enough to be a useful reference for beginners, but comprehensive enough to continue to be useful to more skilled gardeners.

It talks the reader through designing a garden for the climate, soil types, compost, weed control, propatation, pruning etc, and then contains quite a comprehensive guide to the types of plants commonly found in household gardens.

The climate information is specifically Australian so there are probably better books for non-Australian gardeners.… (mehr)