- ©Deborah Carew
I often get asked to recommend gardening books that are practical and useful for gardeners in this community. At the top of my personal heap of useful books are all the Harrowsmith gardening books, and many of them are available in the Millbrook Library. I would particularly recommend the ones by Patrick Lima. He gardens on sandy soil in the Bruce Peninsula; conditions very similar to what a lot of us have here. He doesn’t believe in keeping plants that are overly fussy or that need winter protection.
There are lots of photos of his garden, Larkwhistle, where his simple uncluttered design sense is evident. I’m told that his garden is no longer open to the public but fortunately we still have his books. From Patrick Lima I learned many things including fall planting for spinach. About eighty per cent of it will over winter and be growing as soon as the snow melts. Needless to say, there is always something new to learn in the world of plants and gardens.
The Harrowsmith Illustrated Book of Herbs by Patrick Lima This is a good book that describes basic common annual and perennial herbs. There are the common ones you would expect and less common old fashioned herbs like horehound, costmary, salad burnet and lovage. There is lots of useful information on bed preparation as well as garden structures, growing herbs in containers and herbs for tea. He also covers the basics of garlic, shallots, horseradish, hot peppers and old roses.
The Harrowsmith Perennial Garden: Flowers for Three Seasons by Patrick Lima This book has fabulous pictures of Patrick Lima and John Scanlan’s garden, Larkwhistle. Larkwhistle brilliantly combines spring bulbs and perennials that bloom from early spring to late fall. Not to be missed is the dianthus border. Anyone with sandy soil can accomplish the same thing. Dianthus grow very easily from cuttings so a lot of new plants can be grown from a few. This book has good information on growing tulips, daffodils and other spring bulbs. I share Patrick Lima’s preference for the small early species tulips over the later bigger hybrids. He gives a lot of space to species crocus, eranthis, snowdrops and scillas. These are the earliest bulbs to appear in the garden and to my mind, are the highlight of the garden year. Also in this book is excellent information on primulas, peonies, lilies and many more hardy and fuss free perennials.
(Note: this book recommends purple loosestrife as a perennial as it was published before this plant was declared invasive. I think we can all agree that we don’t want more purple loosestrife in our gardens or anywhere else)
The Harrowsmith Annual Garden by Jennifer Bennett and Turid Forsyth There is lots of good practical information in this book about common and uncommon annual flowers, vines, scented plants flowers for cutting and everlastings. Annuals are often overlooked in favour of perennials by many people. But many self-seeded annuals will come back year after year. If you learn to identify the seedlings of the various annuals, then it just becomes a matter of thinning the carpet of seedlings every spring. Cosmos, Shirley poppies, California poppies, love-in-a-mist and calendula are just a few of the annuals that come back reliably.
I’ve had the Harrowsmith Annual Book for more than twenty years and there are still many plants in it that I’d like to try. I recently picked up a package of seeds of one of the vines featured in the book, Bottle Gourd (Lagenaria spp.), at the hardware store in Millbrook. It will be interesting to see if I can make it look as happy and healthy as the one in the book. Gardeners are nothing if not optimistic.
The Harrowsmith Kitchen Garden by Patrick Lima and John Scanlan There are many vegetable gardening books out there but this is one of the best. Once again, many of the pictures are of Larkwhistle. Equal time is given to practicality and simple, uncluttered design. There’s lots of good information on the basics of what most of us want to grow: brassicas, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, beans and many more.
This book has information about when to start various vegetables from seed and when to plant out and on the number of frost free days required by each different vegetable.
This book also has great recipes since most gardeners I know are interested in how to cook or prepare what they grow.
Next time: more Canadian gardening books as well as some English and American ones.
