New Gardening Books

            Spring has arrived and so have some new gardening books. Prepare for a beautiful gardening season by reading one or all of them.

            Plant Craft: 30 Projects that Add Natural Style to Your Home, written by Caitlin Atkinson, an interior stylist, presents instructions for thirty projects made out of live plants, cut flowers, and foraged branches. You can build a bench planter or vertical garden, craft a tillandsia wall hanging or willow sphere, mount a hanging rock garden or living wreath, or plant a succulent string garden or water sculpture garden, and much more.

            Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden: Grow, Harvest, and Arrange Stunning Seasonal Blooms is written by Erin Benzakein and Julie Chai. Benzakein, the owner of Floret Farm and Chai, the senior editor of Sunset Magazine, guide the reader through the creation of a flower garden, including planning, preparation of soil, planting, and weeding. Then the authors instruct on the care of cut flowers. Finally, the flowers of each season are presented, with accompanying projects.

            Gardening for Butterflies: How You Can Attract and Protect Beautiful, Beneficial Insects is written by Scott Hoffman Black for the Xerxes Society. It contains two books in one; the first discusses the life cycle of butterflies and the current threats to their existence; the second describes how to design and maintain a butterfly garden using appropriate plants. Beautiful color photos are placed throughout the book.

            New York & New Jersey Month-by-Month Gardening: What to Do Each Month to Have a Beautiful Garden All Year, is written by Kate Copsey, a certified master gardener who maintains vegetable and perennial gardens and also writes articles for magazines and websites and has hosted radio shows. Learn to plan, plant, care for, and troubleshoot all of your plants: perennials, edibles, lawn, trees, shrubs and more.   

            Heirloom Plants: A Complete Compendium of Heritage Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs & Flowers is written by Lorraine Harrison and is based upon the extensive seed catalogs of Thomas Etty, the popular heirloom seedsman. This book includes information on almost 500 cultivars to be grown and harvested. Harrison has a master’s degree in garden history and has written other books and gardening magazine articles. Thomas Etty founded the heirloom seed company Thomas Etty, Esq. in the nineteenth century; today it is managed by his great-grandson.