Kitchen Garden Planner

by Darrell Trout, Cathy Barash (Editor), Jo Kellum (Editor)

Gardeners at every level of expertise will eagerly add Kitchen Garden Planner to their libraries. As hard working as it is beautiful, this book intricately profiles, through spectacular photography and illustrations, the designs and plantings of kitchen gardens in rural, urban, small-town settings nationwide.13 projects inspire and help every gardener to re-create a lovely kitchen garden.

Approaches to kitchen gardens varyafrom simple containers to raised garden beds.

Designs span the growing conditions across America.

More than 400 color photographs capture garden overviews, plus interesting vignettes.

Each project features a color illustration of the design, with a key that clearly identifies plants.

Includes thumbnail sketches of plants, and close-up identification photographs.

Covers basics of kitchen gardensafrom soil preparation to succession planting.

Mail-order sources for all plants.

Author Darrell Trout wrote the well-received "Country HomeA(R) Country Garden Planner" and serves as president of the Long Island Horticultural Society and regional director of Garden Writers Association of America.

Genres: Gardening

192 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 1999

Reviews

[Knitography · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more of an inspiration book than a reference book, and it fills that niche very well. The book profiles a variety of kitchen gardens as well as the gardeners who created them. The photography is outstanding - endless shots of the gardens themselves as well as the beautiful plants that grow in them. Just flipping through it will have you making a mental shopping list - I am now obsessed with getting myself some Egyptian onions (they're blue-green and curly!). There's a lot of overlap from one garden to the next so there is some repetition, but there are a lot of unique plants featured as well. Each individual plant photo includes pertinent growing information.

In addition to photos of the gardens there are illustrations showing the placement of all of the plants, in the event that somebody wants to recreate one of the gardens in their own backyard.

While there is some how-to type info in this book, it's really not the book you'd reach for if you needed to know how to get rid of aphids or what makes a good companion plant for tomatoes. This is the book you'd pull off the shelf in the middle of winter when you feel like day-dreaming about what to plant when the ground finally thaws, or just to get a shot of colour on a grey day. I want to go look at all the photos again!

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful ideas.