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Title: Go Native!: Gardening With Native Plants and Wildflowers in the Lower Midwest by Carolyn Harstad, Jeanette Ming ISBN: 0-253-21302-9 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Good reference, not so good layout
Comment: I find this a useful book that I refer back to time to time, as I innately trust the author's advice. There is excellent info in here on a plant's propagation/division and planting requirements. I haven't found anything better.
There are problems: 1) I wish it was more exhaustive in the number of plants it covers, although for a primer it picks really good candidates. 2) It commits the common sin of putting the photographs in their own section instead of with the text, substituting nearly useless line drawings next to the text. 3) The book is topically organized -- plants for shade, using ground cover, developing woodland gardens, etc. I find this rather annoying, and I can never find what I want right away. I'm forever referring to the index. 4) It's presented on cheap paper stock in an amateurish paragraph format, with no page divisions for different plants. This makes it needlessly difficult to use as a reference.
In sum, there is a lot of great info in here, enough to recommend it. I just wish the layout was better.
Rating: 5
Summary: native plants can thrive in abundance with just a little stewardship
Comment: "Go Native...", written more as warm personal narrative, is as extensive as an encyclopedia without being dry, includes superb drawings and gorgeous color photos. It is a great help if one personally chooses to prepare for the low maintenance stewardship of our natural "wildlife" environment, maybe heeding Thoreau's simple joys of nature. "Perhaps it is time for each of us to consider taking a single step" suggests Harstad.
Even a modest land plot can be a natural theater of brilliantly sunlit landscape in constantly changing shadows and colors. Some, albeit greatly scaled down, might be reminiscent of those scenes from the 19th Century landscape artists, such as the Hoosier Group and the Hudson River School, that at the beginning of the 20th Century inspired today's goals in Conservation and Habitat Preservation. Or, as I can imagine, your own "...Brigadoon...look in your heart and there it will be."
Carolyn Harstad writes that native plants and wildflowers have the ability to thrive and survive on their own and when the "pioneers" came "...they wrote glowing reports... that the land through which they were traveling looked like an immense flower garden." Can we assume that similar sentiments inspired George Washington, Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark among others of America's early visionaries?
Here is a small but highly pertinent cross-cultural reference: Eva Cassidy sings of seasonal moods in her typically heartfelt manner: "Autumn Leaves", "Fields of Gold", "What a Wonderful World", and "Blue Skies" on the cd "Live at Blues Alley".
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Resource
Comment: This book was wonderful in describing the various plants that are native to the lower Midwest and which ones (that you would have believed to be native) are not. A must have for persons who would like to create a native yard. A great gardening tool.
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Title: Field Guide to Indiana Wildflowers by Kay Yatskievych ISBN: 0253214203 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Gardening with Prairie Plants: How to Create Beautiful Native Landscapes by Sally Wasowski, Andy Wasowski ISBN: 0816630879 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Prairie Garden: 70 Native Plants You Can Grow in Town or Country by J. Robert Smith, Beatrice S. Smith ISBN: 0299083047 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: October, 1980 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Natural Landscaping: Designing with Native Plant Communities by John Diekelmann, Robert M. Schuster, Renee Graef ISBN: 0299173240 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers by Doug Ladd ISBN: 1560442999 Publisher: Falcon Pub. Date: 1995 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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