Here are 92 books that The Pruning of Trees, Shrubs, and Conifers fans have personally recommended if you like
The Pruning of Trees, Shrubs, and Conifers.
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As a gardening instructor and designer, I've been recommending these five books for years. They were the core texts of the Fundamentals of Gardening course I've been teaching at the New York Botanical Garden for over a decade. Since the publication of The New Gardener’s Handbook, which covers all these topics in a more abbreviated way, I still recommend these five books to my students if they want to dig deeper. These books are what I call “keeper texts.” I own fewer and fewer actual gardening books these days, but it's a fact that a copy of each of these excellent resources resides on my office bookshelf where I refer to them frequently.
I’ve been recommending Brian Capon’s Botany for Gardenersto my gardening students for years. Unlike your typical botany textbook, it’s written expressly for gardeners, which means it presents all you need to know about botany if you are a gardener, not a scientist or a botany student. The presentation is clear, concise, and conversational, so it feels like learning about botany from a friend…a really smart friend! This book will either take you as far as you need to go in botany, or it will open you up to the world of botany and inspire you to learn more.
For two decades readers around the world have been fascinated by Brian Capon's crystal-clear descriptions of how plants work. What happens inside a seed after it is planted? How do plants use each other - and animals - to survive? How do they reproduce, and how do they transform nutrients into growth? "Botany for Gardeners" is the most complete, compact, and accessible introduction to the world of botany available. The new edition has been expanded with dazzling scanning electron microscope photographs and even more amazing facts about plants. Especially timely are new essays on food plants: what makes plants edible,…
As a gardening instructor and designer, I've been recommending these five books for years. They were the core texts of the Fundamentals of Gardening course I've been teaching at the New York Botanical Garden for over a decade. Since the publication of The New Gardener’s Handbook, which covers all these topics in a more abbreviated way, I still recommend these five books to my students if they want to dig deeper. These books are what I call “keeper texts.” I own fewer and fewer actual gardening books these days, but it's a fact that a copy of each of these excellent resources resides on my office bookshelf where I refer to them frequently.
Soil is, without question, the foundation upon which every garden grows, and Grace Gershuny’s excellent follow-up to her classic, Start with Soil, is probably the best plain-spoken explanation of how soil works that you will find. I took soil science in college and barely survived. If only I had known about this book, it might have saved me some heartache and a flirtation with a failing grade. The Soul of Soilteaches you soil science in a fun and friendly way, which is exactly what gardening is meant to be.
Soil is the basis not only for all gardening, but for all terrestrial life. No aspect of agriculture is more fundamental and important, yet we have been losing vast quantities of our finite soil resources to erosion, pollution, and development.
Now back in print, this eminently sensible and wonderfully well-focused book provides essential information about one of the most significant challenges for those attempting to grow delicious organic vegetables: the creation and maintenance of healthy soil.
Chapter 2, "Understanding the Soil System," is alone worth the price of admission. Gershuny and Smillie give lay readers and experts a clear explanation…
As a gardening instructor and designer, I've been recommending these five books for years. They were the core texts of the Fundamentals of Gardening course I've been teaching at the New York Botanical Garden for over a decade. Since the publication of The New Gardener’s Handbook, which covers all these topics in a more abbreviated way, I still recommend these five books to my students if they want to dig deeper. These books are what I call “keeper texts.” I own fewer and fewer actual gardening books these days, but it's a fact that a copy of each of these excellent resources resides on my office bookshelf where I refer to them frequently.
One of the most exciting things new gardeners learn is how to make more plants, either by collecting seeds from the plants in their garden or learning how to clone the plants they own. Plant propagation is part science, part faith, and part plant wizardry, and Smith’s step-by-step presentation is the best I have found. With a recently published new edition, it’s easier than ever to have an illustrated guide at your side, showing you how to start seeds, take cuttings, or make grafts of all your favorite plants.
With easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, veteran horticulture teacher Miranda Smith provides a complete reference showing every step for cultivating new plants—whether from seed or cuttings or with techniques such as layering, grafting, and budding.
Propagating new plants from existing ones is not only sustainable but also rewarding for gardeners of all skill levels. The Plant Propagator’s Bible offers a solid and complete, go-to reference for expert gardeners but is also a perfect primer for the novice plant lover and horticulturalist.
Smith teaches readers, with the support of hundreds of 4-color photos and detailed illustrations, the natural process and conditions in which…
As a gardening instructor and designer, I've been recommending these five books for years. They were the core texts of the Fundamentals of Gardening course I've been teaching at the New York Botanical Garden for over a decade. Since the publication of The New Gardener’s Handbook, which covers all these topics in a more abbreviated way, I still recommend these five books to my students if they want to dig deeper. These books are what I call “keeper texts.” I own fewer and fewer actual gardening books these days, but it's a fact that a copy of each of these excellent resources resides on my office bookshelf where I refer to them frequently.
This book perfectly demystifies the art of pruning trees and shrubs for even the most apprehensive gardener. Turnbull’s conversational style and matter-of-fact presentation of all you need to know to do it right and not wreck your plants, has been a fan favorite for years. I recommend it to my gardening students that may find the Brown/Kirkham pruning book a bit on the dry side. Cass makes pruning sound fun, and important, blending her horticultural knowledge and skill with a keen political sensibility that stresses the ethics of doing things the right way for the health and well-being of your plants.
This 3rd Edition of Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning covers more than twenty additional plants in three new chapters. The result is the new definitive guide for the home gardener with friendly, expert advice from Cass Turnbull, founder of Seattle's PlantAmnesty, whose mission is "to end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs caused by mal-pruning." Nothing about pruning is obvious. In fact, most of it is downright counterintuitive. People try to prune plants like they cut lumber or hair. But that doesn't work to get what they want. Your plants are actually telling you how they want…
I love gardening and learning about unusual plants but I find that many gardening books don’t provide a lot of useful advice. I grow over 3,000 different types of plants and have a background in chemistry and biochemisty. I teach gardening to new gardeners and garden design to more experienced gardeners. My students want to learn practical things like solving pest problems and growing plants with more flowers. I am always on the lookout for books that provide them with hands-on practical advice they can use right away.
I have known Lee Reich through his writings for a number of years and I find his books factual and practical. He simplifies gardening down to some basic principles and then tells you exactly how to copy his style in your own garden.
Pruning can be a daunting task for those who have not done very much of it, but it can be quite straightforward. In The Pruning Book, Lee simplifies the process of understanding why you need to prune something and then he shows you exactly when and how to do it.
It sounds simple enough, but pruning can confound even the most competent gardener. This new edition of Taunton's award-winning book explains the dos and don'ts of cutting back; from humble houseplants to the most amazing exotics, readers learn how to make the right cut the first time, every time. With straightforward prose, over 250 photographs and 135 drawings, this essential reference walks gardeners through the process of pruning everything from ornamental trees and bushes to topiaries and bonsai. This demystifies the timing and techniques that result in the most successful pruning for healthy growth and good form. Updated with the…
When I was studying plant science in graduate school, I realized that what I really wanted to do was not lab research but to help people understand plants better so they could grow more beautiful and bountiful gardens. To this end, I have written several books, founded the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG), taught horticulture at City College of San Francisco for several decades, and, since 2006, written a column on gardening for the SF Chronicle. My list of books about gardening know-how will painlessly prepare you to grow plants well.
Ann
Ralph, formerly in charge of the fruit tree section of Berkeley Horticultural
Nursery, has written a short, easy to use, book on caring for fruit trees. It
should come with every fruit tree sold, since its text and illustrations so
effectively teach the methods of planting, pruning, and ongoing care that will
produce delicious fruit.
Grow your own apples, figs, plums, cherries, pears, apricots, and peaches in even the smallest backyard! Ann Ralph shows you how to cultivate small yet abundant fruit trees using a variety of specialised pruning techniques. With dozens of simple and effective strategies for keeping an ordinary fruit tree from growing too large, you'll keep your gardening duties manageable while at the same time reaping a bountiful harvest. These little fruit trees are easy to maintain and make a lovely addition to any home landscape.
Amy Goldman is a gardener, author, artist, philanthropist, and well-known advocate for seed saving, plant breeding, and heirloom fruits and vegetables. Her mission is to celebrate and catalogue the magnificent diversity of standard, open-pollinated varieties, and to promote their conservation. Amy gave up a career as a clinical psychologist to follow her first love which was kitchen gardening. In her own words from Heirloom Harvest: “I have romantic leanings and tend to follow my heart… In hindsight, I know my heart steered me straight, and toward a future I could never have imagined…My passion for the fruits of the earth has deep roots….”
Rosalind Creasy is one of my heroes. It was she who first turned me on to heirloom fruits and vegetables over 30 years ago, when I read her newly published Cooking from the Garden. That seminal tome celebrates the food garden’s bounty and uses in cookery.
Creasy is best known as a pioneer in the field of edible landscaping aka foodscaping: the practice of integrating edible plants into the landscape for beauty and sustenance. Think yummy delicious arbors, allées, groundcovers, borders, hedges, espaliers, foundation plantings, and potted plants. She spells out all the how-to’s, wheres, and whyfors in her first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping; and updates it all in the second edition, Edible Landscaping. If you’re looking for practical advice, detailed instructions, design schemes, and recommended plants to feed body and soul, then allow me to point you in Ros’s direction.
This comprehensive, feature-packed book shows how you can create more beauty around your home, grow delicious healthful produce, and save money and natural resources all at the same time—by landscaping with edible plants. Author Rosalind Creasy, a landscape designer and leading authority on edible landscaping, provides all the information necessary to plan, plant, and maintain ornamental edible landscapes, with specific designs for all geographic and climatic regions of the country. Drawing on years of research into the most decorative and flavorful species—from the exotic water chestnut to the ever-popular apple—Creasy shows how edibles can form the basis for a beautiful…
My husband sums up my biography as “I am, therefore I dig.” I live, garden, read and write in Chatham, New Jersey, and have had a long, open love affair with the gardening style “across the pond.” At the New York Botanical Garden I teach English garden history, and I’m a regular contributor to the British gardening journal, Hortus. In my writing, I follow the relationship between the pen and the trowel, that is authors and their gardens. I’ve written books about children’s authors Beatrix Potter and Frances Hodgson Burnett, and, as you might imagine, the research trips to the UK were a special bonus.
To understand the British love of gardening, I put Jenny Uglow’s chatty book top of the list. Reading her prose is like listening to a favorite teacher, one who tells a good story while slipping in the pertinent facts. "If I were a crow, flying across Britain in the 10th century,” she writes, “I would see forest and fields, iron forges and salt pans, small towns and settlements - occasionally I could circle over a deep park, or swoop down and feed on an orchard of ripe fruit, or pull worms from the newly turned earth in a small allotment." She takes us from Roman villas and monastery herbers to palace gardens, Sissinghurst’s herbaceous borders, and the futuristic Eden Project. She loves her subject, and so will you.
Did the Romans have rakes? Did the monks get muddy? Did the potato seem really, really weird when it arrived on our shores?
This lively 'potted' history of gardening in Britain takes us on a garden tour from the thorn hedges around prehistoric settlements to the rage for decking and ornamental grasses today. It tracks down the ordinary folk who worked the earth - the apprentice boys and weeding women, the florists and nursery gardeners - as well as aristocrats and grand designers and famous plant-hunters. Coloured by Jenny Uglow's own love for plants, and brought to life in the…
My husband sums up my biography as “I am, therefore I dig.” I live, garden, read and write in Chatham, New Jersey, and have had a long, open love affair with the gardening style “across the pond.” At the New York Botanical Garden I teach English garden history, and I’m a regular contributor to the British gardening journal, Hortus. In my writing, I follow the relationship between the pen and the trowel, that is authors and their gardens. I’ve written books about children’s authors Beatrix Potter and Frances Hodgson Burnett, and, as you might imagine, the research trips to the UK were a special bonus.
If you love flowers and love to garden, do not miss this book by British poet James Fenton. Grab your seed catalogs and make a list of the hundred flowers you would grow, then compare your choices to James Fenton’s. I found it the perfect book to read during those gray days of winter, his bright prose radiating like an injection of sunshine. Fenton romps through the world of flower color: the orange of nasturtiums and Mexican sunflower, the lemon yellow evening primroses, and California bluebells “the colour of blue poster paint.” He captures his century of blooms with a poet’s pen. I didn’t want it to end.
"An engaging mix of the serious and the playful, and Fenton writes with a lightness of touch perfectly suited to the subject." --Alexander Urquhart, The Times Literary Supplement
Forget structure. Forget trees, shrubs, and perennials. As James Fenton writes, "This is not a book about huge projects. It is about thinking your way toward the essential flower garden, by the most traditional of routes: planting some seeds and seeing how they grow."
In this light hearted, instructive, original "game of lists," Fenton selects one hundred plants he would choose to grow from seed. Flowers for color, size, and exotic interest;…
As a child I was always fascinated by nature, especially the way the trees changed throughout the seasons. This may be what stimulated my love of growing and caring for bonsai trees and why I have written many books about the seasons myself. Now as an author, ex-primary school teacher, parent, and grandparent I am aware of the importance of encouraging other children to have this same interest and fascination in nature and the ever-changing seasons. I believe it fosters an awareness of how the world is far bigger than themselves and everything is interconnected. I hope these books will inspire young mind’s love and understanding of the natural world.
The Busy Busy Day is a lovely picture book that gently allows the children to discover for themselves the different indications that spring has arrived. I like the way it highlights the importance of caring for and appreciating nature even if it is in our own back garden.
The illustrations are beautiful. I am always in awe of Daniel Howarth’s illustrations and have been lucky enough for him to have illustrated some of my own books. The clever way he illustrates the different characters showing their emotions makes them come to life on the page. You can laugh along with the children as Ginger the Cat and Floppy the Rabbit get into a muddle whilst gardening.
