Saturday, July 23, 2022

Flower Gardening for Beginners A Guide to Growing and Maintaining a Cut-Flower Garden

 

Flower Gardening for Beginners is a technique and inspiration manual for cut flower gardening aimed at home gardeners by Amy Barene. Due out 26th July 2022 from Callisto on their Rockridge imprint, it's 178 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook format. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free. 

This is such a aesthetically pleasing and useful book. The author has a friendly accessible style of writing which is encouraging and it feels like a well run workshop class with an organized and experienced facilitator. She explains new concepts in the text and in context. The subjects are arranged from -very- basic basics (how to grow flowers, what to choose, how to plan and situate a garden), to more complex subjects such as troubleshooting, maintenance, and flower arranging. 

The second part of the book, roughly half the content, contains seasonal blooms with each flower's profile linked from the table of contents. Profiles contain plant name (both Latin and common names), perennial/annual/biennial, zone hardiness, and culture info. There are no photos, but each profile contains a beautifully detailed color watercolor of each bloom which is easily recognizable. The author/editors have also included some useful appendices such as resource and links lists to suppliers, zone maps (for the USA), and a useful hyperlinked bibliography for further reading.

Four and a half stars This is a useful and graphically appealing book. It would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition, gardening groups, smallholders, home gardeners, and community gardeners.  
 
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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