GARDEN BOOK REVIEW: AMERICA'S COTTAGE GARDENS

If you'd like a book to comfort you about your crazy, exotic choices for plants or your hodgepodge ideas about landscaping, this is YOUR BOOK!  American Cottage Garden's  takes you on a fascinating journey on how American's invent their own styles of gardening based on harsh climates and locales. Here in Texas, we can only drool over the lovely cottage gardens of England. But somehow, someway, all over America, gardeners have found a way to get something (anything) to grow. This book is a celebration of those very personal gardens and the gardeners that choose to follow a different drummer we call Cottage Gardens.

I love this book since one of my hobbies is to find and photograph interesting and beautiful Cottage Gardens  in my part of Houston and display them on my other garden blog. Here's a taste of how gardeners here have beaten the odds (climate wise) to create their own styles.

I love this part of Houston!

 Hurray for Gardeners!

At almost 25 years old, America's Cottage Gardens, is a great look back at the beginnings of the current wave of cottage gardens. While the photos are nice, the best part of the book are the many stories about why the author finds a particular garden interesting and unique. Their writing styles is warm and personal, and might I add, timeless.

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That's it for this time. A tip of the trowel to our fine host, Holley, for having us over for another Book Review party.

You can click on her colorful button at the top of my blog and see the whole collection at her blog, Roses and Other Gardening Joys.

Thanks, Holley!

Oh, and today's kitten photos of our little family. They're playing around with my socks while I write this.

They were hiding in the linen closet while the vacuum was going.

Happy Gardening!

David/:0)

CHAPTER DETAILS:

What is an American Cottage Garden?
by Patricia Thorpe and Eve Sonneman
Published: 1990 by Random House
Readily available for a couple of dollars at Barnes & Noble or Amazon Books

The South: Plantation Style & the reign of the azalea

Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky: Southern hospitality and a luxurient landscape

The West Coast: California, Cottage Survival

The Pacific Northwest: A climate created for gardening; anything grows

The Midwest: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri: 'The best soil on earth' and survival in a drought year

Texas: Independence and exuberance; the return of the native; the local color is Latin

Utah, Montana, Wyoming; Petunias and salvation; log cabins, forest fires and frost in July