'Tis the season when northern gardeners get grouchy. None of that kinder, gentler stuff for us - the urge is to RIP up that blanket of snow and stare at the ground, willing things to "GROW, WILL YOU!!!! Just show me GREEN!" The sight of a weed in enough to gladden the soul, and the reality of several more weeks before the soil will be workable is enough to send that gladdened soul tumbling back down to the depths.
Fingers itching for the feel of dirt, I retreat instead to the more practical alternative - gardening books. Disappear into one for a few hours and looking out to see snow comes as a shock; for while there, I dwelt in summer. For a while there I mellowed out and forgot everything but the ideas and plans I create in my head when I read something particularly good.
Great gardening books, for me, fall into three categories: great instruction manuals, great inspirations, and great reads.
Instruction Manuals
These are the books I always have behind me when I'm at the computer, which will get pulled of the shelf several times a week. Some teach me about different kinds of plants, others about different types of gardening.
The book that never seems to make it back to the shelf is Steven M. Still's Manual of Herbaceous Ornamental Plants (Stipes Publishing Company, 1994.) It's the kind of book you want right beside you when you are poring over all those catalogs and trying to whittle down your choices. Still's concise information about almost every plant you might want to grow is a quick way to whittle that list down to those plants you have the best chance of succeeding with.
A book that I leave in the bathroom is Rita Buchanan's Making a Garden, (Houghton Mifflin, 1998.) This isn't as cruel as it sounds. My husband has been reading it. My husband isn't a gardener - yet. But Buchanan's clear, practical information on everything from soil prep to planting plans and different garden styles - and the wonderful illustrations by her husband, Steve Buchanan- have somehow caught his fancy - and suddenly he is beginning to talk like a gardener. He gives the book rave reviews. I like it a lot, too, even if it does have me itching to run outside and start a new bed.
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