Container Gardening for the Midwest

by William Aldrich, Don Williamson

Includes: *500 recommended plants & designs*planting tips and growing conditions *rules and principles of container gardening color, flowering time, height, spread and hardiness of each plant *photos showing each plant in a container setting *covers MN, WI, IL, IN, MI, OH

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2008

Reviews

[emyrose8]

3.5- The book starts with basic information about why to container garden, how to choose a pot, basic things to consider, etc. The second section is a plant directory with growing info about each plant, height, hardiness, tips, varieties. Not much about container growing edible plants.

[Jess d'Artagnan]

I am looking for information on growing vegetables in containers and had high hopes for this book. It mostly just goes over ornamental container gardening, which is fine, but the information is nothing you can't already find online with some simple searching.

[Katie]

The book I started with was Container Gardening for the Midwest, one of many books at my library which has caused me to be pleasantly surprised by the ability of even a small library to collect lots of region specific books. This book followed a layout typical of the books I read, starting with general information about container gardening. This included the benefits of different pot materials, different design elements (color pairing, shape, etc), how to plant your garden, and how to care for your garden. Following the general care section was a section on specific plants. Unfortunately, for gardening I think location north/south matters at least as much as what region of the US you're in, so there was still some generality to this section. I don't think it's fair to blame the book for that though when the only way to improve that would be an even more specific focus. In fact, the plant specific section in this book was one of my favorites, because it had great pictures for every plant and I prefer to pick plants by appearance before determining whether or not I can really grow them. I think it was a good book to start with, since it didn't provide overwhelming details, and the long, picture-filled plant section made it the book I used most to make a to-be-shortened list of plants I might like to include in my own balcony garden.

Read more reviews of my reviews of gardening books here.

[Kim]

The authors and I have different definitions of "Midwest". Also, they really only talk about flowers. I'm more interested in vegetables.