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Featuring Garden Books From Notable Local Horticulturists

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Click Here To BuyAnnuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens

by Wayne Winterrowd
From Booklist: Winterrowd is well known in the gardening realm in his roles as writer and designer, and for beautiful North Hill, the garden he and his partner, Joe Eck, tend in Vermont. In this encyclopedic reference, Winterrowd catches the wave of popularity accorded a parade of alluring tender plants, from choice biennials and true annuals to half-hardy perennials and exotic shrubby specimens. Writing in a thoroughly engaging style, Winterrowd presents plant entries filled with information and advice on propagation, cultivation, and the level of difficulty one can expect. Moreover, the lively descriptions include a valuable guide to pronunciation, fascinating bits of background, and illuminating accounts of nomenclature. Photo vignettes capture details of foliage and flowers of selected species and varieties in a resource that is both fun to read and instructive, with appendixes revealing growing techniques, mail order sources, and common names. - Alice Joyce Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review: "Everyone knows Wayne Winterrowd is one of America's most authoritative and imaginative garden writers. What they might not know --but will once they read this book-- is what a wonderful writer he is. Between these covers you will find instruction and delight in equal measure." - Michael Pollan

Click Here To BuyThe Compleat Squash
by Amy Goldman, Victor Schrager (Photographer)
Walker Farm Personal Review: I first saw this wonderful book at the New York Botanical Garden Bookstore and nearly fell over backwards just at the sight of the stunning cover. Anyone that knows Walker Farm can attest to our obsession with heirloom vegetables, types both practical and bizarre. Often disappointed by garden writers who profess to be growers (setting aside for the moment a discussion on growers who profess to be writers), I was pleasantly surprised by the stunning photos and beautiful prose. There is a trend in the market to bring back the flavor and substance of many neglected heirloom vegetables and I suggest you hop on the vintage bandwagon by purchasing this delightful work. Odd warty pumpkins, long necked squash, colorful gourds abound ... with internet sources! Be the first on your agricultural block to stop traffic with an heirloom fall display or, if you're a home gardener, grow the bumpy Victor squash/pumpkin and scare the neighbors. You can partner this book up at Amazon with another of Ms. Goldman's great books, Melons for the Passionate Grower at substantial savings. Believe you me, you won't be sorry.

Click Here To BuyRoses: A Celebration
by Wayne Winterrowd, Pamela Stagg
Book Description: Among the plant kingdom, Rosa is a relatively small genus, comprising only about one hundred species around the globe. But as these species intercross, they have given rise to as many as thirty thousand cultivars, making the rose perhaps the most various of all plants grown in gardens-and one of the most treasured. This one-of-a-kind collection gathers together thirty-three eminent gardeners and rosarians, including Graham Stuart Thomas, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas C. Cooper, Joe Eck, Michael Pollan, Anne Raver, Page Dickey, Thomas Christopher, David Austin, Peter Beales, Dan Hinkley, and Jamaica Kincaid. Each writes about a favored rose

Click Here To BuyThe Intimate Garden
by Gordon & Mary Hayward
Book Description: Garden and landscape designer Gordon Hayward and his wife, Mary, take the measure of their home garden—in process for more than twenty years—and tell readers how to make their own gardens welcoming and personal, truly a reflection of their needs and dreams. As the Haywards point out, "successful gardens grow naturally out of their owners; great garden design is honest, authentic, and unself-conscious." Gordon explains how aspects of his and Mary's lives are woven into their garden, but also how those aspects remain firmly fixed in universal design principles that apply to every garden. With the practical advice and achievable aims that make his other books so rewarding, Hayward lets readers in on the secrets that make his garden outstanding. Almost 200 stunning photographs specially commissioned for the book show key garden views in all four seasons, giving readers a rare look at a year in a garden. Before-and-after shots, detailed garden maps, and plant lists are included.

Click Here To BuyYour House, Your Garden: A Foolproof Approach to Garden Design
by Gordon Hayward
Book Description: From Publishers Weekly A gifted teacher, Hayward (Stone in the Garden) begins with a deceptively simple idea: "Your house is the center of your garden." His exploration of what that means both as "an aesthetic notion" and a "practical tool" gives the reader a solid foundation in home garden design. In six chapters devoted to the main locations for the garden-front, side, back (including patios and terraces), ells or courtyards, between buildings and around outbuildings-readers learn how to create inviting outdoor spaces, solve common problems and establish a unifying flow. Hayward's examples from his work as a prominent garden designer illuminate principles that home gardeners can apply to their own circumstances. He prescriptively presents welcome solutions to eyesores such as "power lines and meter boxes, propane tanks, satellite dishes, mounded leach fields" and more. While the book includes many helpful planting suggestions and plant lists (as well as 200 helpful photos and drawings), this is not a what-to-plant-where guide. Hayward's approach is fundamentally architectural, and he warns not to "expect all the answers to rely solely on plants." For Hayward, a garden is "made up of paths and sitting areas among trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals in pots, furniture, and garden ornaments." Numerous detailed watercolors and color photographs show the interplay of plants with structural elements such as paths, steps, arbors, fences and stone walls. The reader who follows Hayward's advice to "bring your creative mind to our images" will be rewarded with "no end of springboards for your own garden designs." - Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Click Here To BuyStone in the Garden: Inspiring Designs and Practical Problems
by Gordon Hayward
Book Description: How to use stone—in walls, walkways, terraces, and more—to create beautiful, lasting gardens. Stone furnishes the framework, the structure, and the sense of permanence that transforms gardens. Whether in the form of retaining walls or benches, terraces or walkways, as bold standing stones or as boulders at the edge of a small stream or pond, stone lends a garden focus, providing the perfect foil to plants. In this lavishly illustrated book, readers are inspired to think creatively and practically about the many roles stone can play in their gardens. More than one hundred color photographs show ways in which stone graces great gardens from around the world. One hundred detailed drawings give readers the know-how to complete a wide range of projects with confidence and finesse. A full-color visual index of fifty-three widely available varieties of stone lets readers select the right color and texture for their purpose and overall plan, and a comprehensive list of resources nationwide tells how to find skilled stonemasons and where to buy stone. 125 color photographs, 100 drawings.
About the Author: Gordon Hayward is a nationally acclaimed garden designer, a regular contributor to Horticulture magazine, and the author of three previous books, including Garden Paths. He lives and gardens in Vermont.

Click Here To BuyThe Adventurous Gardener
by Ruah Donnelly
The Adventurous Gardener: Where To Buy The Best Plants In New England offers a warm, lively, and appreciative guide to the region's outstanding plant sources, personally visited by the author. The Adventurous Gardener reveals:
- Specialty sources for dazzling plants, rare bulbs, heirloom seeds, plant-hunter's trophies, and the newest hybrids for New England gardens.
- Growers and suppliers of unusual, locally grown plants that will thrive in your garden.
- Picturesque nurseries, from family farms to elegant greenhouses.
- A comprehensive plant finding index, maps, clear directions, and travel tips for New England gardeners.
- An indispensable sourcebook for gardeners, designers, plant fanatics, and explorers of horticultural New England.
Walker Farm is honored to be listed

Click Here To BuyLiving Seasonally : The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill

by Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd
After 20-plus years of tutelage at the feet of Vermont's climate, landscape designers and authors Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd have mastered the art of living seasonally. Fundamentally, this means eating what's ripe in the garden--there's no freezing and very little canning at North Hill--when it's ripe. The meditative, ardent Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill describes this life hitched to the wax and wane of the seasons.

Eck and Winterrowd, who also authored A Year at North Hill: Four Seasons in a Vermont Garden, go into luxurious detail on the tiniest aspects of horticultural and barnyard life. These two are passionate and effective teachers--so much so that, by page 43, the reader fully understands their characterization of pumpkin vines as "as wayward as vegetable guineas," a reference to the hen with a mind of its own. We--even those of us who've never sprouted a seed or hoed a row--get it. But some of the most rewarding passages in Living Seasonally are those that ruminate on the inevitable blending of the spiritual with the prosaic, as in this reflection on Vermont pumpkin pie, made with maple syrup from their own trees:

We begin our syruping when the buds of the maples are tight-furled, hardly more than sharp, dull-green points along the bare stems.... By the time the pumpkins have been selected and sown, the leaves of the maples will have hardened into the thick shade of summer.... When the maple leaves have turned transparent again, all into orange and tawny yellow, the pumpkins must be gathered to cure in the warmth of the house. As they lie in heaps and piles, their colors reflect the autumn garden, and are a fit emblem of the season. An emblem, too, is the pie they make, where beginning and end and all the processes in between are caught up in a perfect round.
This book will captivate both the avid gardener-cook with its recipes and techniques for planting and seed selection, and the citydweller searching for the answer to why it's impossible to find tomatoes that taste like tomatoes in January. --Stefanie Durbin

Click Here to BuyA Year at North Hill: Four Seasons in a Vermont Garden

by Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd
In this "passionate, reflective, inspiring, endlessly quotable" (Allen Lacy, New York Times Book Review) book, two acclaimed landscape designers offer a month-by-month chronicle of their magnificent Vermont garden. "A gold mine of practical advice."--Anne Raver, The New York Times.

coverMy Garden (Book)

by Jamaica Kincaid, Jill Fox(illustrator)
(From Booklist, September 15, 1999) Kincaid's exuberant writing style complements her wide-ranging ruminations on gardens and the pursuit of gardening. Plant life is mysterious; specimens that should flower but do not do so raise questions that beg to be answered. Winter is not Kincaid's cup of tea, but the season allows time to enjoy inspirational seed and plant nursery catalogs. Insofar as her involvement in making a garden goes, Kincaid acknowledges both "satisfaction and despair." Readers who garden will recognize those feelings as the predictably contrary states of mind when we cultivate the land. Kincaid tours London's Chelsea Flower Show, Monet's Giverny, and Gertrude Jekyll's Munstead Wood, and she recalls unusual plants and observes the behavior of individuals from the past and the present. Still, Kincaid's views extend beyond the musings found in your usual garden journal. She ponders the history of slavery, the arrogance of the ruling classes, and the fact that ornamental gardens are a luxury, offering a great deal to savor and reflect on. Altogether, a fascinating cornucopia to consort with on nights when the garden is at rest. Alice Joyce

coverAnnuals for Connoisseurs;

Classics and Novelties from Abelmoschus to Zinnia
by Wayne Winterrowd
This inspiring and practical introduction to the sometimes overlooked world of annual flowers examines a wide range of annuals, including classic favorites as well as new gems. In-depth plant portraits accompany inspiring and practical recommendations for appropriate maintenance, as well as the special needs of each featured flower. 75 full-color photos.

Click Here to BuyElements of Garden Design

by Joe Eck
"The great problem with rules," writes Joe Eck, "is that once they are laid down people tend to obey them." In this slender book of essays about gardening, Eck's goal is less to provide diagrams and formulas about how to build a garden than to share with the more experienced gardener his philosophy of why garden in the first place and what it is that can make a garden so pleasing to the eye and the soul.
Illustrated with 35 drawings, this book details the proper way to create foundation plantings, terraces and decks, fences, gateways, and trellises, utility areas such as the compost pile and the garage, places for children to play, home greenhouses, water in the garden, and areas for vegetable planting, sculptures, lawns, banks, and slopes.

Click Here to BuyGarden Paths : Inspiring Designs and Practical Projects

by Gordon Hayward
Reviews The author , January 28, 1998: This is a practical garden design book for the homeowner. This is a book about form and structure in the garden, so it is relevant for anyone anywhere, no matter what size garden you have. I wrote this book for those of you who have just purchased a new home and you don't know where to begin your own garden design. I also wrote it for those of you who have a garden that you feel is disjointed and incoherent, and you would like to give it more form and coherence, where all the parts relate to the whole. That is, it is a book for those of you who want to develop your own landscape design, or work in a more informed way with a professional designer. The first 2/3rds of the book is for inspiration with photos of fine gardens we visited across America, England and France; the last 1/3rd is how-to. It's an approachable, inspiring and, above all, useful book that comes out of my own work as a garden designer. We've sold over 35,000 copies so far. I think it's a winner, but then, I'm prejudiced.

Click Here to BuyGarden Paths:

A New Way to Solve Practical Problems in the Garden
(Taylor's Weekend Guides)
by Gordon Hayward
The author, Gordon Hayward - haywardg@sover.net , February 8, 1998: This is a practical, useful garden design book. What distinguishes my earlier book on paths from this one is that this book for the Taylor Weekend Gardening Guide Series looks to the path for ways to help you solve specific design problems. Section one (the first third of the text) is about paths in general, where to put them, how to make them, and what paving materials you should choose. The second section (the remaining 2/3rds) is about how the path can help you solve five specific design problems: 1. You've just built a house and you don't know where to start your garden design. Look to the doors of your house and make paths from those doors out into what will become your new gardens. 2. You have a garden, but it's a bit of this, a bit of that, with no overall plan. Paths can help you pull everything together. 3. You're bored with your foundation planting, paths provide lots of alternatives as they become the spines for new front, side or back gardens. 4. Your garden is tiny and you want to make it feel bigger. Paths can help a lot, no matter how small your garden is. 5. You want to put in a perennial garden, but you don't know where it would look best, and what shape it should be. This chapter has lots of ideas for you. The final chapter shows how my wife and I used a small outbuilding - our garden shed here in Vermont - as the center of a small garden. You could follow our lead to create a garden around your garage, garden shed or any other small building. This step-by-step chapter will help build your confidence as you start designing your own gardens. This is not a book about plants; it's about how to design the structure of your garden, no matter how big or small, no matter where it is. Once you have the structure, then you decide which plants to use in the light of your gardening zone and personal style.

Click Here to BuyTasha Tudor's Garden

by Tovah Martin, Richard W. Brown (Photographer)
Writer and illustrator of more than 75 beloved children's books, Tasha Tudor lives a 19th-century lifestyle in the gardens surrounding her hand-hewn house. In this gorgeous book, garden writer Tovah Martin and photographer Richard Brown take readers into the magical gardens called "Paradise"--and behind the scenes. Photographs and watercolors throughout.

Click Here to BuyThe Private World of Tasha Tudor

by Tasha Tudor; Richard Eric Brown (contributor)
The author and illustrator of more than 90 beloved children's books (the first published in 1938), Tasha Tudor--now 77--lives a 19th-century lifestyle on a Vermont farm. Through her own words, and enchanting full-color photographs, readers follow her throughout the seasons, caring for livestock, her pets and her renowned garden, and at work creating her handmade dolls that sell for thousands of dollars each.

Click Here to BuyA Child's Garden of Verses

by Robert Louis Stevenson; Illustrated by Tasha Tudor
Tasha Tudor's signature watercolor illustrations illuminate this collection of heartwarming and inspirational quotations from writers who have brought her great joy--among them Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Mother Goose. Full color.

Click Here to BuyA Brighter Garden

by Emily Dickinson; Illustrations by Tasha Tudor
A celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first publication of Emily Dickinson's extraordinary poetry, selected especially for children by Karen Ackerman. Tasha Tudor's vivid watercolors match the delicacy of the moment and capture the special connection between nature and humanity that Dickinson so brilliantly captured in her words.


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