The Perfect Book for Any Californian Who Wants to Save the Environment in Their Own Backyard

books:


	• Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens Glenn Keator, Alrie Middlebrook University of California Press, 2007 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

must have for the bookshelf

This book is a must have for the California native gardener. I'd say the book's biggest strength is in its' inspiration- contains nice photographs of natural landscapes and gardens modeled after them. It groups plants by communities which is nice, though maybe hard to do. I know I live in an area which doesn't fit exactly into of any of the communities they list, but I can still get the idea they are trying to convey, and look around at what is in my community. California is so diverse you almost want a bunch of more specific and in-depth books for different areas inside California, but I guess maybe those areas of interest are too small to sell enough books to make it worth the while.

It does a good job listing different kinds of plants, my only complaint with this book is that I would have liked more pictures accompanying each plant for which information is given- because you really can't tell from the brief physical description what the plant looks like. As someone else has mentioned, this book is best paired with California Native Plants For The Garden. However, this complaint should be taken with a grain of salt, for designing a California native garden I think this book is the best on the market. Together, these two books provide the backbone to build your California native plant book collection around.

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Practical Orientation to Natives

-We need more books like this to make Native Gardening more amenable. What "Landscapers' Challenge" did for Landscaping, this book will hopefully start to do to open up the still rather arcane world of Native Plants. It is practical and full of detailed, appropriate, high quality photographs of sample materials. Visually on par with "Landscape Plants for Western Regions" by Perry.

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Not bad, but not what I was looking for

I was looking for a book that would give me a comprehensive guide to xeriscaping with native plants. This book contains one section that approaches my needs but is more of an overview over the native plants of the many diverse vegetation zones of the states. For what it is, it is a nice book. Just not a match for me.

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Fantasticly useful

Love this book, gets you to think in terms of plant groupings & not just on a singular level.

The Perfect Book for Any Californian Who Wants to Save the Environment in Their Own Backyard

This book is excellent, with many good photographic examples of complete native landscape. It also set for an excellent philosophy for landscape design for the both the use of native and non-native plants. However it really shouldn't be thought of as a complete source for native gardening. I would also suggest that you pick up 'California Native Plants for the Garden' by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O'Brien. Even between these two books all of the possibilities for beautiful California native plants and landscapes created using them have not yet been fully explored, but these books are an excellent start.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Inspirational, practical, and easy to use, this book was created with the aim of conveying the awesome diversity and beauty of California's native plants and demonstrating how they can be brought into ecologically sound, attractive, workable, and artful gardens. Structured around major California plant communities--bluffs, redwoods, the Channel Islands, coastal scrub, grasslands, deserts, oak woodlands, mixed evergreen woodlands, riparian, chaparral, mountain meadows, and wetlands--the book's twelve chapters each include sample plans for a native garden design accompanied by original drawings, color photographs, a plant list, tips on successful gardening with individual species, and more. Both residential and professional gardeners will learn the benefits of going native with gardens that require less water and fewer fertilizers, attract wildlife, engage the senses, create a sense of place, and, at the same time, preserve our rich natural heritage.
Designing Native California Gardens includes:
* More than 600 selected native species recommended for the garden
* More than 300 photographs of native plants, natural plant communities, and residential native gardens
* Recommended places to visit for viewing each plant community

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