Innovative, Authoritative, and Lavishly Photographed

books:

	• Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West Marcia Tatroe Johnson Books, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Rocky Mountains

The high and DRY (read little humidity) Rocky Mountain region is totally different in horticulture than the majority of the USA. This book really does a fine job of telling what plants will grow here and how to create micro climates in a garden to accomplish different landscaping roles.
It is an excellent book and I would recommend it highly.
Forty years ago, in Boulder, CO (elevation 6,000 feet), I created a wonderful garden on the south facing outside wall of a long white brick office. For 10 years something bloomed in that garden every month of the year! Often it was only early December or late January but something bloomed--even when there was 2 feet of snow nearby.
This book gets into the trials and tribulations of Rocky Mountain Gardening and the pictures are also wonderful. Wonderful book.

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Innovative, Authoritative, and Lavishly Photographed

In a more perfect world, a great many more gardens in Denver, Santa Fe, Reno, Boise, and Salt Lake City would resemble the gardens featured in Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West. As water becomes more costly in the West, we can expect many thousands of square feet of bluegrass to be ripped out and replaced with more water-wise plantings. Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West shows us what to plant where all that turf used to be. This is one of those rare garden books that is so completely invested in the region it covers that it is almost a gardening book in disguise. The photography dances between stunning landscape shots (one of Charles Mann's photos frames a wide vista of chamisa and asters) and more traditional--yet equally vibrant-- garden photos. Beyond the photos, Marcia Tatroe proves a capable and passionate Virgil, sharing her hard-earned knowledge of xeriscape design freely. This book veritably bulges with lists: whether you want to know about rock garden plants, perennials for shade, or signature trees of the region, you'll find a corresponding list. Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West is an essential book for anyone considering making a garden in this region--put it on your bookshelf between Lauren Springer's The Undaunted Garden and Jim Knopf's Xeriscape Flower Gardener.

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Cutting Edge Gardening - a narrative

Cutting Edge Gardening is a great book for those living along the front range of the Rockies. The illustrations are fabulous for getting ideas, the plant choices are excellent as the author describes microclimates that will occur even in your back yard. The author's rhetoric gets in the way as you have to page through her disappointment in blue grass lawns and the simpler choices people make in their yards. It is also difficult to go back for information as it is in narrative style without reference points. But, it is exciting reading and will get you enthused about planting in areas you might think are dead zones. It is similar in style to the Undaunted Garden which I also recommend.

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Best Book To-Date For The Cold Western United States

Marcia and Charles have produced a wonderful regional gardening book that is everything such a book should be--chock full of hard-won wisdom about the best plants to grow and beautiful photography to illustrate the plants and their region, the Intermountain West. Gardeners in Boise, Denver, Flagstaff, Pueblo, Taos, Santa Fe, Cheyenne, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Provo, Cedar City, Reno, Elko, Moscow and other cities throughout the cold winter climates of the western United States (and the corresponding parts of China, Iran and the steppes of Asia) will all draw inspiration. Marcia's humorous anecdotes about her experiences and tribulations in her gardens entertain and inform as she describes hundreds of species of plants in rock gardens, perennial gardens, integrating cacti, proper use of shrubs, roses and much information on uses of garden ornaments. Charles' brilliant photography of plants, landscapes and gardens blends seamlessly with Marcia's text and Marcia's husband, Randy, also contributes some exceptional photography of the Tatroe garden. Please, take a drink from this firehose of a gardening book. You will learn something new from each page.

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Inspiring!

I picked this book up at my local library and what an inspiration! It's not a how-to step-by-step guide, however it is a good companion for one of those. If you are in need of inspiration or just enjoy beautiful photographs, this has it all! Plants are named in the text, whose garden has what plant with what, so you can gather ideas from there. It would also make a fantastic coffee table book as the pictures are amazing! You can't go wrong with beautiful inspiration.

The first complete gardening book to cover the hot, dry, desert and plains areas of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, Idaho, Montana. Topics include: extensive plant lists for all areas, hardscape ideas using rock and wood, where to find garden art and how to use it to create your own regional aesthetic, as well as hundreds of practical suggestions to overcome the challenges of gardening in the Intermountain West.

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