Books! Books! Books!

 Three terrific possibilities for Holiday presents!

I have noticed over the years that most gardeners seem to love books ALMOST as much as they like plants. In my case, I'm an inveterate collector of both--to the extent that I've sometimes acquired several copies of the SAME book (more on that later)...

The three books I feature at the top of this blog have special meaning for me: the first because it consumed a great deal of time from me and ten of my colleagues at Denver Botanic Gardens over the last few years. I think it's vastly more comprehensive than any comparable field guide for the Rocky Mountain Region, featuring well over a thousand species--dozens of penstemons and eriogonums  where most field guides only have a half dozen or fewer for instance. With pretty detailed range maps and key features--and the book is very reasonably priced (a great gift for anyone who loves Western wildflowers). Sorry to toot our horn like this--but heck, if you don't toot it, who will?

The Western China wildflower book is just fantastic--a weighty tome you can't take into the field (unlike OUR nifty volume!), but what a rich feast of one of the world's richest floras. There's simply nothing like it: Western China is the very heartland of much of our garden flora--you NEED this book!

As for the Tapestry Garden...What can I say? Ernie and Marietta O'Byrne are two of the most precious people and fantastic gardeners the world will ever know. I've been privileged to be friends for many decades. I've only been to their garden twice, and both times I was overwhelmed by the subtlety, the expansiveness, the incredible beauty of the place. I guarantee you that if you check this book out, you'll have to have it. I remember my first visit to Eugene, walking into their seemingly endless acreage in full bloom was a garden epiphany that brought me to tears of envy and appreciation~-and this book has managed to do the same!

What's by my bedstand righ now...

There's a meme on the web showing that umpteen percent of college graduates never read a book again after graduating, and another umpteen percent read one or two every decade or some amazingly  long interval: of course, since it's on the internet, it must be true!

I also guess that the tiny fraction of us who are passionate readers sort of make up for the rest: I usually have a stack of books by my armchair and another by my bed stand (the ones by the bed stand are designed to put me to sleep). I failed pretty badly with the three featured above--I started with White Tiger--given to me by a friend and I forgot who it was (if you are reading this please let me know--I need to give it back). It's a Booker Prize awardee (Adiga got it for his first book when he was a youngster no less): it's very readable and a rather wild depiction of contemporary India. I have gotten bogged down half way through--although I zipped through the first part. It's frankly intimidating for a woose like me: a murder is foreshadowed....pause...not good for late night reading...better move it to the armchair.

So I thought I'd sleep better with an extremely long biography about a writer--books that are generally excellent for putting you to sleep (writers usually have pretty dull lives). I've been an Updike fan most of my life, and have only read a dozen or so of his books--so I thought it would be good to get a perspective on his writing, since I've accumulated another dozen or two I'd like to read in the next few years. Well, Adam Begley is a much better biographer than I'd counted on--I'm tearing through the book: Updike was brilliant and his biography reveals more than I'd counted upon about his books! A large part of his fiction is very autobiographical--not sure I approve! I hadn't realized he'd loomed so largely the last half century on the New Yorker, although I do recall reading a lot of his reviews back then: I'm down to the last hundred pages--and loving it....I

But SOMETHING possessed me to start Robin Chotzinoff's People with Dirty Hands. Robin had been living in Denver when she wrote this book about gardening--which amazed me since she's not mentioned a single gardener I know so far. The many local references make the book even more compelling for me. She's delved headlong into Rose Rustling (which took her to Texas), and has weaved all over Colorado and New Mexico exploring hot chili pepper lore--and now she's visiting with seed catalog writers and nurseries around the country--I'm a third of the way through and torn between these three books, they're all so much better than I'd bargained on--and my sleep is suffering as a consequence! I peeked ahead--lots more interesting adventures in store!

And then there are books by personal friends: I have known all three authors of these books for many decades. Of course, for many of us books ARE friends--and when a book contains the wisdom and passion of someone you've known a long time--well--it becomes a personal classic.

I am not a very good vegetable gardener, which is reason enough to buy Matt's book (which has only just been printed--I don't have a copy in my greedy little hands yet!). I know without even looking into it that it will be sumptuously photographed and full of obscure and fascinating stories and facts. I allude to Matt repeatedly in this blog--he's one of my heroes, and his Growing with Plants is surely the most diverse, delightful and outstanding gardening blog on the web. Matt was a star on the trip I led to Yunnan last June--I think this portrait of him conveys the wonder this magician seems to conjure everywhere!

Matt Mattus at Tianqi lake in Yunnan last June

Marilyn Raff began volunteering for me at Denver Botanic Gardens over 30 years ago: she has been a dynamo from that time, continuing a close association during the  many years she managed a landscape design and construction company, and as she wound down her business and moved from a large garden to a more intimate space near Denver Botanic Gardens, she's produced a shelf full of books on roses, grasses, intuitive landscape design and volumes of poetry--and she's STILL volunteering at Denver Botanic Gardens.

I took this picture of Marilyn when I dropped by her house to pick up her latest book Nourished, which is a unique blend of autobiography, recipes, poetry and woven through with her lifetime's study of Jungian philosophy, love of plants and gardens and humor. I find this is a wonderful armchair book to pick up and enjoy a few pages here and there. Although intensely personal, it's nonetheless available on Amazon! The book reminds me a bit of the Japanese pillowbooks--pastiches of lists and a bit of gossip and advice!

Chris sent me Gardenlust months ago: I of course immediately read the wonderful section dedicated to the Mordecai Childrens Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, and began dipping into this garden and that all over the world (few gardeners are as enthusiastically peripatetic as Chris). I was so thrilled with my acquisition I showed it to our Education Department Program Manager, who pried the book out of my grip and has hoarded it ever since. If you read this blog, you shall probably need this book to help guide you to the little known but extraordinary gardens that don't often get the limelight, but often have the best plants and design...

So here are just nine books--my shelves are groaning with so many more--I have catalogued less than half and I'm already approaching two thousand books: some are purely for reference. Others are fodder for when my piles next to the armchair or bed get too low...I have hundreds of books on rock gardening (my specialty in horticulture after all)--most of which are dusty Victorian tomes that are depressingly similar to one another, but which I want to have in my special bookcase for the time I too may write such a book. I collect quite a few writers--most of whose works I've read (often repeatedly as in the case of Vladimir Nabokov--I have more than a bookcase and a half of his books and books about him!). But also Gerald AND Lawrence Durrell, Philip Roth, Robert Louis Stevenson (a passion of my childhood and youth), John Updike, H.G. Wells. I have a bookcase dedicated entirely to Byzantine and Ottoman histories and biography (probably twenty books just on Constantinople/Istanbul).  I have a growing library of South African and Central Asian floras and historical/cultural books.

When I visit thrifts, flea markets, second hand stores I always browse the books and nab (if the price is right) books on any of my hobby horses which often turn out to be duplicates (perhaps this one will be a cleaner copy? Or older edition?) . And many of these duplicates become gifts to share with family and friends who share one of my passions.

But I still have more books...and only so much space. So I've decided to open up a virtual bookshop on my web: this is the link: The page is not quite "up to snuff" yet--but you may find something you have been looking for on it! I hope so anyway...