10 Great Gardening Books

This is one of my all-time favorite gardening books. It is smart, beautiful and is jam-packed with useful information. This is a book that would be useful for beginners as well as expert succulent gardeners. The author's sense of design and her ability to share her expertise in an accessible and interesting way, makes this book one that I go back to again and again.

Pamela Crawford is a master at the craft of container gardening. She has pioneered the idea of "side-planting" containers and has developed a business selling her container systems. Her knowledge of plants and how they do in containers is vast. She shares this wealth of experience with straightforward, interesting and intelligent writing. The pictures in the book are gorgeous and there are ideas galore for plant combinations and fabulous containers. Pamela estimates that she has researched and tested some 10,000 plants for container growing and she has condensed this research into a list of what she considers the best container plants. This book is great for beginners and experts alike for ideas, inspiration and information.

Garden Up! is a book that can make you think about gardens in a new way. Thinking vertically can add dimensions to any garden, including containers and can help us to push our gardens, container or otherwise in new directions--literally. This book is full of ideas and inspiration from two creative people well versed in all aspects of garden design. I particularly like their ideas about layering and balcony gardening. This book would make a great gift for any gardener.

Container gardening is all about the plants isn't it? The Encyclopedia of Container Plants: More than 500 Outstanding Choices for Gardeners by Ray Rogers with photography by Rob Cardillo, thinks so. This book is a joyous and beautiful look at container plants and shows how to use them.

You have got to love an encyclopedia with an attitude and one that is so well-written, with juicy prose and humorous descriptions. You have got to love it even more when the photographs are as engaging as the writing. The combination in this book make it a slam-dunk as a resource for the beginner to expert container gardener. This is a book that you can go back to again and again--each time coming away with more knowledge and delight in the acquisition of it.

In my climate, terrariums are the perfect hobby during the winter for container gardeners. They let you play with plants and get your hands dirty. They also have the huge benefit of being easy to care for. Even those of us with a history of houseplant serial killing, terrariums can allow us to grow things inside.

For anyone interested their hand at terrariums, this book is a must have. It is beautiful, well written and full of information and glorious inspiration--turning terrariums into an artform. These are not they fusty old terrariums of yesterday, these are modern, sometimes whimsical glass frames for the display of beautiful plants.

There are great instructions for how to make the terrariums and even more importantly information on how to keep alive.