Library Index

Book Titles

  1. The $64 Tomato
  2. A-Z of Annuals, Biannual and Bulbs
  3. Art of the Kitchen Garden
  4. Best Plant Book Ever
  5. Botany of Desire
  6. Building Outdoor Structures
  7. Carrots Love Tomatoes
  8. Container Gardening
  9. Desert Wildflowers
  10. Everyday Garden Solutions – Reader’s Digest
  11. Feng Shui
  12. Flowering Plants
  13. Garden Decorating Book
  14. Garden Madness
  15. Gardening for Life – The Biodynamic Way
  16. Harvesting Rainwater for Landscaping
  17. Japanese Gardens
  18. Kitchen Gardeners Handbook – Design Plans
  19. Let it Rot – Composting
  20. Native Plants for High Elevation Western Garden
  21. New Small Garden
  22. Organic Gardening for the 21st Century
  23. Potting Sheds – Romance of Gardeners Made Simple
  24. Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening Made Simple
  25. Sunset Western Garden Book
  26. Talking Dirt – Organic Gardening
  27. Tea Gardens – Places to Make and Take Tea
  28. Tulips
  29. Vegetable Gardening – Simple Steps to Success
  30. Vegetable Gardening in the Mountain States (Idaho, Mountain, Utah)
  31. What’s Wrong with My Vegetable Garden – 100% Organic Solutions
  32. You Can Garden Anywhere – Tips the Experts Don’t Want You to Know
  33. Your First Orchid
  34. Right Plant, Right Place
  35. Great Plants for Small Gardens
  36. Garden Designs
  37. Creating Privacy in the Garden
  38. Wings in the Light: Wild Butterflies in North America
  39. Growing Your Own Vegetables
  40. Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs
  41. Native Plants for High Elevation Western Gardens
  42. 500+
  43. Yates Garden Guide
  44. Successful Gardening
  45. The New Sunset Western Garden Book
  46. Orchids: A Practical Handbook
  47. Orchids: Collecting and Cultivating Beautiful Orchids

Videos

  1. Extraordinary Birds
  2. Pruning
  3. The Art of Gardening

If you want to check out a book, please email Barbie Zingg with the title.  You can pick it up at the next meeting. Many of these books are available at Amazon.com. 

More Details on the Books

Tomatoes
The $64 Tomato

A humorous essay detailing the design, construction, nurturing, and fruition of a garden on Long Island.  It chronicles overpriced landscape architects, lackadaisical contractors, plagues of Japanese beetles, and the accounting details of how one Brandywine tomato is reconned to cost $64.   It captures the spirit of why we garden, and what it costs us.   

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A-Z of Annuals, Biannuals & Bulbs
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Art of the Kitchen Garden

Artistic designs, and plants that feature colorful foliage and flowers figure prominently in this book that celebrates the sort of kitchen garden common within the French Ancein Regime and now rarely found outside bits of the Loire Valley.  It provides information on artful designs and plant selections that will bring them to fruition.

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Best Plant Book Ever

Comprehensive Guide to Living with Plants

Great stories with pictures and information on  growing and taking care of your indoor plants.

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The Botany of Desire

Everyone’s favorite food anthropologist teaches us why we like peaches. Examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want.

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Building Outdoor Structures

A detailed how-to guide for using wood to construct pergolas, arbors, retaining walls, and more.  

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Carrots Love Tomatoes

Secrets of companion planting for successful gardening

Companion planting can  increase yield, preserve soil fertility, and repel pests.  This guide suggests some of the best and worst pairings. Parsley loves asparagus, but broccoli hates tomatoes.  Follow good companion planting and help your garden become its own healthy ecosystem. 

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Container Gardening

Complete and detailed information on both indoor and outdoor container gardening. 

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Desert Wildflowers

From Arizona Highways, over 60 species of Arizona’s unusual desert wildflowers are shown in this full-color, information-filled book. You’ll discover  how to grow them in your own garden.

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Everyday Garden Solutions

Questions answered about weather, composting, ground covers, roses, bulbs, and so on. Perhaps there is some talk of dirt since it talks about a reading age of 18 years and older.  Its sole reviewer gave it one star at Amazon.com.  

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Feng Shui for Gardens

Lillian Too discusses gardening from an Eastern point-of-view.

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Flowering Plants: A Pictorial Guide to the World’s Flora

A comprehensive reference of botanical information and beautiful artworks. Plant families of more than 700 are  divided into the two plant groups:  dicotyledons or dicots. 

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Garden Decorating Book
gardening humor
Garden Madness

A humorous look at gardening.

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Gardening for Life – The Biodynamic Way

Nurture the soil and your plants will grow.  The book addresses building and maintaining soil fertility, good planting times, biodynamic preparations,  and dealing with diseases and pests. 

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Harvesting Rainwater for Landscaping

The publication discusses how to collect and store non-potable rainwater for the purpose of keeping landscape plants alive. Starting with simple methods and working toward more complex ones, it covers components and system design considerations. 

Japanese gardening
Japanese Gardens

Capturing the tranquility, elegance, and serenity Japanese gardens evoke, this tome features  exquisite photograpy of 20 such gardens. 

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Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook

One grows food for the kitchen in order to have what cannot be found in grocery stores.  Here’s a good place to start learning how to work with the seasons, the soil, and the special plants that make it all worthwhile.  

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Let it Rot – A Composter’s Handbook.

Let it Rot! may have started the composting movement. Gardeners interested in recycling waste into soil-nourishing compost will advice on starting and maintaining a composting system, building bins, and using compost. 

Native plants
Native Plants for the High Elevation Western Garden.

Native plants for low-maintenance at high-altitude regions of the American West (5,000 feet and above).

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The New Small Garden

This is a practical guide for gardeners designing small spaces. 

Organic gardening
Organic Gardening for the 21st Century

A guide to organic gardening to help you grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers all year round. Gives you information on how to find, choose, and grow plants that thrive without synthetic chemicals.

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The Potting Shed – Smith & Hawken

Practical and beautiful,  the photos inspire with chapters on the history of the potting shed. The book includes descriptions of gardener’s tools and how to store and care for them.

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Raised Bed Gardening Made Simple

A  handbook on raised bed gardening. The book includes descriptions  about sowing seeds, thinning, transplanting, cultivating, mulching, watering, harvesting, pest control, composting, crop rotation, and seed saving. It’s a  guide beginners and  experienced gardeners.

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Sunset Western Garden Book
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Talking Dirt – Organic Gardening

“Down to earth advice” on worm cultivation, healthy soil, irrigation systems, pruning, and plant combinations. 

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Tea Gardens – Places to Make and Take Tea

This beautifully photographed guide illustrates design strategies and planting plans for creating comfortable outdoor spaces. 

tulips
Tulips

An illustrated guide to the tulip identifying the different varieties and providing a history and tips on choosing bulbs and care

vegetable gardening
Vegetable Gardening – Simple Steps to Success

Vegetable gardening for small garden owners with full-color photography, charts, checklists and step-by-step techniques.

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Vegetable Gardening in the Mountain States

 Vegetable gardening from when to set out seedlings of each plant and how to protect them from untimely frosts.  How to deal with local and regional pests, weeds, and diseases are covered.  Mountain states with their low humidity, strong sun, and wide temperature swings can make gardening difficult.  Even though AZ is not in the list, this should be a good reference for high altitude areas near Prescott. 

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What’s Wrong with My Vegetable Garden? –  Organic Solutions

Packed with great photographs it a perfect place to start diagnosing vegetable garden problems.  It offers organic solutions to solving them and to avoiding them in the firstp place.  Reviewers say “Hooray,” and “Very, very helpful..” 

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You Can Garden Anywhere 

Packed with 1317 garden tips.  And probably as many exclamation points, it will help you:

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Your First Orchid

Growing orchids can be tricky.  This guide helps one navigate the special problems of these plants.  The good news, is that if you can succeed with them, they can be an almost perpetual source of color and form in a home, extending horticultural success to aesthetic triumph.  

Right Plant, Right Place

A reference book  to the plants that will look best and grow best in your garden. Thousands of garden plants are  organized according to growing conditions and appearance will help your design your garden.

small gardens
Great Plants for Small Gardens

“This is a topic to revisit over and over whether you are a city gardener…or a country gardener trying to make a big space manageable. All gardening styles are considered, and there is a ‘Great Plant Guide’ at the end that includes plants that are ideal for small gardens…” –Garden Showcase Magazine

garden design
Garden Designs

A guide to designing gardens from a well know designer. Transforming sites from California to Maine and other countries, Hobhouse presents more than twenty garden designs. 

creating privacy
Creating Privacy in the Garden

Chuck and Barbara Crandall discuss trees, shrubs, and other natural landscaping strategies to achieve privacy. 

butterflies
Wings in the Light: Wild Butterflies in North America

Hundreds of photographs  providing a comprehensive  guide to the butterflies.

vegetables
Growing Your Own Vegetables

From the United States Department of Agriculture.

herbs
Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs

This book offers information on the history and uses of more than a hundred herbs. Tips on growing herbs is included.

Native plants
Native Plants for High Elevation Western Gardens

Native plants for low-maintenance at high-altitude regions of the American West (5,000 feet and above).

500 plants
500+
garden guide
Yates Garden Guide

From New Zealand, this book offers chapters on  flowers, bulbs, roses, perennials, vines, trees and shrubs. It covers cacti, bromeliads, succulents and ornamental grasses. A chapter on gardening  special conditions like in  dry regions and heavy clay soils.

gardening
Successful Gardening

Sunsets gardening guide for the Western United State

Sunset western garden
The New Sunset Western Garden Book

The New Sunset Western Garden Book includes thousands of color photographs, illustrations, and an easy-to-follow information. This is an important reference for beginning and expert gardeners.

orchids

A book by two of the world’s leading orchid authorities gives information on how to identify, choose, grow and display orchids. 

Orchids

An encyclopedia of orchids with advice on choosing orchids for your collection. Over 300 photos.

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