Price : $17.74

Product Description

In this book, renowned garden designer Motomi Oguchi offers the reader a step-by-step, practical approach to creating Japanese gardens, drawn from a wealth of experience that covers thirty years and encompasses the design of more than 400 gardens. The author uses real examples from gardens he has designed, constructed, and photographed to illustrate his key points, approaching each work from the perspective of the home or building owner.
Oguchi begins with front gardens, as these are usually what one encounters first when entering a home. Typically, these front plantings are not defined Japanese garden types but rather, physical areas. He then moves on to tsubo niwa (courtyard gardens) and kare sansui (dry gardens) that might be found in the middle or rear of a building, or any available small space. Next, he introduces tea and tree gardens, which are more likely to be sections of a larger garden; and highlights specific characteristics and conditions of interior gardens.
Within each chapter are general layouts and methods of developing the various gardens, which precede specific, step-by-step instructions. The author also offers practical and affordable variations on more ambitious designs and shows how they can be adapted to the readers home or building. In addition, Oguchi emphasizes the importance of proper maintenance and offers suggestions for special touches and restoration.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-01-29
Love this great book! Motomi Oguchi’s first in English!
I have it displayed like a coffee table book, and relish over as a tresure I can disappear away into… Our tropically themed yard that has unparralled panoramic views offering one perfection longings of West, North and East will be comlimented and made more elegant with some Japanese themes running the spine of our yard… Japanese rock walkways, lit gracefully with stone lanturns… Something permanent in this ever un-permanent world. Yes, the true escape is home…
Love the details in this book and strict attention to tradition.
Lot’s of photo’s!!!
"Domo", Motomi Oguchi for your wonderful agricultural gifts…
I will be checking out Joseph Cali’s new books, also.

Review date : 2008-01-24
Although this is a nice book, it is not as good as the reviews led me to believe. The attractive photos focus on primarily a few gardens that the author himself has made. In at least a couple of cases, the gardens were built where cars had been parked. I kept wondering where the cars went. I am sure the owners did not get rid of them.
The book has been praised for telling readers how to build elements of the gardens. This is true for a few fences and such in the featured gardens. However, I am sure other books in my collection have more information about building more things.

Review date : 2007-12-19
This is an excellent book for those of us wishing to create their own Japanese style garden. There are numerous explanations and detailed instructions for creating various elements that are not described in most books on this subject. I can’t wait for Spring to begin.

Price : $17.87

Amazon.com Review

The need for keeping a garden diary is as apparent as the limitations of our memories. Not only do we frequently lose plant names, but also freeze dates and garden triumphs as well as failures. Beautiful enough to give as a gift, and practical enough to use yourself everyday, The New Three-Year Garden Journal should work better than the many notebooks one begins and discards over the years.

Each month begins with advice on plants and design; herbs, climbers, shrubs, trees, annuals and bulbs are all discussed and illustrated with color photos. Then for each month, weather warnings are given by region of the country (April: danger of frost continues in the Northeast, September: extreme heat still possible in the mid-South), and tasks for each week of the month, divided by the same seven regions. Pruning, fertilizing, planting, and maintenance tasks are described alongside lined pages for each of the three years.

It is clear that The New Three Year Garden Journal was designed by a gardener. Chock full of information, it is spiral-bound to lay flat so it’s easy to write in. Carry it with you into the garden, glue in photos or sketch ideas on the pages of graph paper, dream over the lovely color photos. This is a book to use over and over again during the three-year period it covers, then look back at for years into the future. –Valerie Easton

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-01-18
This book gives a column for each week and a grid map for each month and that is all. There is no space alloted for email addresses, nursery listings, plans, etc. Despite being spiral bound, the book will not bend enough to make it comfortable to write on the left side. It does give plenty of information, but it is really a gardening book not a gardening journal. Those of us who make copious notes are out of luck. A cheap notebook from the grocery store would have been better.

Review date : 2007-01-29
This is the beginning of my tenth year using this book. It is very convenient to look back and see where the garden is in relation to past years. It is especially fun in an unusual year like this one, when winter hasn’t seem to arrive yet, though it is nearly February. When and if it comes it will be much shorter than usual. I use the book to record rain totals, bloom times, maintenance issues and to put reminders for next year where I will notice them in time. The book binding and pages hold together very nicely for the three years, despite some dirt and water from the garden, and many repeated openings and closings.

Review date : 2004-12-10
While there are wonderful photos and a very nice layout in the book, the regional gardening guide completely omits the Upper Midwest. I was very disappointed because the growing conditions in places like Minnesota, Wisconson, Iowa and Illinois are not represented. I would also conclude if you live in places like Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, you may also be disappointed because those climates and growing conditions are also not represented. While one could follow the regional guides for the Plains, Mid South or the Northest in these areas, omiting these regions really is not acceptable. For about a third of the country, this is not a good choice for a garden journal.

Review date : 2004-09-02
As an experienced gardener, I’ve used a number of journals over the years. This one ranks among the best for utility and beauty. There are a number of full color photos scattered throughout, along with (loosely) season-specific design guides: Designing with Vegetables in summer, Designing with Houseplants in winter, etc. The back of the book also includes garden maintenance information on pruning, winter protection, propagation, and other areas. None of this maintenance information is especially new or comprehensive, but it’s handy to have as a quick reference. There are also blank graphing pages throughout for your own design ideas.

The real value in this book for me is in the week-by-week "to-do" lists for each region and in the many blank lines for my notes. For example, in the second week of October in the mid-Atlantic, the book advises that you prune and fasten climbing plants against wind damage and take hardwood cuttings to increase plant stock. These to-do lists are great reminders for when to fertilize the lawn, prune woody plants, plant peas and lettuce, etc.

Each week also has three columns of blank lines for your notes, with a blank header line to fill in the year. This layout is especially appealing to me, as I may use all three columns the first week of January to lay out my design ideas one year, but I still have three weeks of note space left for the following years’ January notes. During growing season, I use only one column per week to track weather, pests, and so on.

The only gripe I have about this book is that while it is spiral-bound to lie flat, it’s not possible to fold in back on itself like most spiral notebooks. It’s also a fairly large book so you pretty much need to lie it flat on a table to be comfortable writing in it — or at least I do. If it folded on itself, it would be a lot easier to take notes with the book resting in my lap in the garden.

Otherwise, highly recommended.

Review date : 2000-04-30
This is a great book. There is plenty of space provided for you to write about your garden for every week of the year. It is also very informative. It gives specific info. for every zone in many different gardening topics for every month. And it has a special topic it goes into depth for for every month of the year. There are beautiful photographs throughout the entire book. It also has graph pages for designing gardens. I have recommended this book to quite a few friends who have loved it.

Price : $13.99

Product Description

Tough Plants for Southern Gardens is for Southern gardeners who want low care, no care, tried and true plants for their gardens. This is the book for gardeners who want plants they can plant and forget!

Tough Plants for Southern Gardens is written for novice and accomplished gardeners alike, for all gardeners who value their leisure time. They also value the appearance of their home and appreciate the benefits of well-placed landscapinghowever; they do not want to devote too much time to keeping it beautiful.

Tough Plants for Southern Gardens includes 120 of the toughest plants for Southern gardens, including annuals, bulbs, perennials, shrubs and small trees, ornamental vines, and lawns. Each featured plant is noted for its ability to thrive with minimal care. Many of the selections can withstand drought, poor soils, and minimal (or no) pruning, while providing beauty and charm in the home landscape.

Each selection provides specific information on the plant’s use in the landscape, mature size, flowering characteristics (if applicable), varieties, soil preference, and propagation. Each chapter also contains informative essays covering topics such as: companion planting tips, pest avoidance, and handling invasive plants.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2008-09-25
Great Book! Felder Rushing has a way of sharing information in a way that is funny(sometimes) and interesting as well as informative. A great sequel to Passalong Plants which he co-authored with Steve Bender. A must have for the southern gardener.

Review date : 2008-09-07
As a former yankee, I’ve struggled with southern gardening for the past ten years. This book is a terrific compilation of facts, lists, advice, pictures and humor. An easy and fun read that encourages you to write comments in the margins then gets you out the door and into the garden!

Review date : 2008-08-01
Must have guide for those who do not want to wade through endless books that are much to technical for the average home gardner–novice or seasoned–helps to take the dreary out of selection.

Review date : 2008-06-26
Rushing’s homey, humorous approach is pleasant reading and the advice is sheer gold. I have planted a number of the plants he recommends, and every one of them is flourishing brilliantly. His advice is nicely targeted; by breaking the south into upper, middle, and lower zones and by describing each individual plant’s tolerances for sun and water, he allows readers from Virginia to Florida to Texas to all find just what they need in it. It’s a great shove in the right direction for novice and experienced gardeners alike, as well: stop pampering fragile unadapted divas you picked up at the garden center and start making the plant’s suitability to your area the first step. Look to other gardeners and local growth first, and discover the beauties that lie within it.

Don’t panic, though - Rushing really knows his plants! You won’t find yourself trapped in a yucca-and-aloe nightmare or confined to a dogmatically barren xeriscape. His book’s excellent photos and descriptions present readers with a wide variety of beautiful plants with many different looks and qualities. Thanks to Rushing, I have a delightful little English-style cottage garden in northeast Texas, soft, pretty, and delicate-looking as you could ask, and not a single plant of it requires more care than the automatic sprinklers give the lawn once a week. And did I mention that my lawn looks better too? He’s that good!

His advice on how to prepare plants and soil for transplant is golden as well. As I read, I recognized so many of my own worst mistakes in the past, and I learned how to give my new plants a much better introduction to my garden. Rushing always aims to balance effort and results, and offers a tantalizing new perspective on gardening: the more you pamper, the more you teach the plant to require pampering. Pick tough plants, do less to them, and teach them to fend for themselves. They do!

There are one or two things I wish I could add to this book. An index by light/water requirements would be one; the book is arranged by types of plants (shrub, tree, vine, etc.), and that is very good at communicating the necessity for planning a garden’s structure in layers, but not very quick for finding, say, what plant would grow best in a specific location. Rushing is pretty good at identifying potentially invasive plants, but he recommends at least one - "air potato" vine - that I believe is illegal to plant in Florida. The other thing I did have to watch was the question of toxicity. He doesn’t address this with most plants, and so I did end up tearing the sweet peas out when I learned that one of the symptoms of ingestion was permanent paralysis. If you’ve got pets or small children using the yard, do Google up some of the many excellent plant toxicity guides out there and check carefully to avoid a tragedy. And do buy this excellent book, because it’s a gem!

Review date : 2008-05-03
I saw this book at a local bookstore but waited for the savings at Amazon. It has wonderful photos and discriptions. In fact I can’t keep it at home much because my friends keep borrowing it! It contains tried and true southern garden plants my mom and grandmother had plus some surprises I never thought of before. I would highly recommend this book!