California’s San Joaquin Valley is so congenial to plants I thought it made me a gardener. When I got my first job in a retail nursery I quickly realized how little I knew. Twenty years in the nursery trade expanded the depth and breadth of my garden skills. I owe my horticultural education to knowledgeable colleagues, an unending stream of interesting questions from nursery customers, and especially to Ed Laivo who introduced me to an ArcticGlo nectarine that commanded my attention.
I wrote...
Grow a Little Fruit Tree: Simple Pruning Techniques for Small-Space, Easy-Harvest Fruit Trees
By
Ann Ralph
What is my book about?
A backyard fruit tree too often outruns a garden and gardener in terms of size, labor, and overabundance. It doesn’t have to be this way.Grow a Little Fruit Tree is the handbook and encouraging companion I needed when I started out with fruit trees. It describes an easy pruning method that keeps trees small and reduces crops to household-sized quantities. It explains the simple logic of pruning. The book concerns itself with basics, rules of thumb, and, above all, the knowledge and confidence to manage the task.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The Essential Earthman: Henry Mitchell on Gardening
By
Henry Clay Mitchell
Why this book?
For years Henry Mitchell wrote for The Washington Post about the agony and the ecstasy of gardening and, consequently, everything else. This classic is laced with pith, wit, gems, and instruction throughout. No one does it better or funnier. The easiest path is to quote the man himself: “Shasta daisies are far more agreeable and lovely than one thinks they are going to be.”
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Botanica's Roses: The Encyclopedia of Roses
By
Peter Beales
Why this book?
Because of obvious limitations—space in the garden, sun, availability, and one’s responsibility to be a conscientious steward during a probably unending California drought—it’s impossible to grow as many roses as one would like. It’s not impossible, however, to content oneself with two or three plants for cutting flowers, and, instead, moon over this comprehensive collection of gorgeous photographs, descriptions of form, petal counts, habits, parentage, and scents. Keep 2,000 roses on the bookshelf. This book is a treasure.
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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
By
Christopher Alexander
Why this book?
This comprehensive book about architecture gets at the heart of the garden we live in, the environment where we reside. Each short section on topics as diverse as “Shopping Street,” “Entrance Transition,” “Tree Places,” or “Pools of Light” directs to related sections where you’ll find guidance about how to build or at least encourage a world that works for people, a world that feels right, a world we belong in, and one that feels like home. This world necessarily includes shared public and private spaces, work, light through windows, views, fruit trees, and a place for an old person to sit in the sun.
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The New Sunset Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide
By
The Editors of Sunset
Why this book?
For more than half a century theSunset Western Garden Book was the first and last word for Western gardeners. This compendium established a zonal system specifically for the nuanced West, and provided exhaustive, accurate, updated, and unbiased information, plant by plant, variety by variety, from A to Z. It offered a selection guide for specific situations suited to inland heat and the temperate coast. It provided basic information about planting, pests, soils, pruning, and weeds. I sold hundreds of copies of this indispensable volume to nursery customers. My co-workers did the same. That the sun has set on this essential field guide to gardening in the West is a bitter pill. Our Western gardens are diminished without it.
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Get Your Pitchfork On! The Real Dirt on Country Living
By
Kristy Athens
Why this book?
Most of us who took action on our ache to “get back to the land” gave ourselves over to a rustic bucolia we’d created in our minds. And, yes, as it turned out, it was all of that, the harmony of seasons, the deep peace, the night sky, the quail, and deer. It was other things, too, things we hadn’t reckoned on—isolation, endless labor, and the hourly rate of the well man. Readable and entertaining, Get Your Pitchfork On! eases the urban to rural transition with hard-won practical advice. It will infuse your dream, whatever its scale, with a healthy dose of preparedness to assure its best chance of success.
