I have recommended to many of my friends who also are gardeners
924090
I am a professional gardener in San Diego. I have 3. This cuts very well even in heavy weeded area.  This is not heavy so I can use it for long time without resting. No need much maintenance. I have recommended to many of my friends who also are gardeners.
3063681
In a word or two this book is as entertaining as it is educational.  Reading this book has been a joy.  I have learned quite a bit but enjoyed all of the anecdotes just as much.  I can hear and relate to the authors voice, she is clear and clever,  it's like sitting down with an old friend - so enjoyable.  I completely recommend this book even if you are not a "serious" gardener you will enjoy it.
4563308
Im a brand new gardener and I was able to learn so much about gardening! After 2 days; I already have my SFG up with 6 plants in it!
514179
This is easily my favorite gardening book.  Already it is dog-eared and well-worn.  A lovely combination of useful information, beautiful photos, and very good writing.  The author tells you what she has learned over 30 years of gardening in the hot and humid southeast and does so in a way that is a pleasure to read.  I highly recommend it.
4466231
I bought this book after it was recommended by my garden club.  I like it and have found a lot of interesting ideas.
1367546
Enjoyed this little book on so many levels. While it was not a 'how to garden' book it was a 'yes, me too' book. I feel like I have a new friend that totally gets my beautiful obsession. There were so many oh yeahs, OMG's, and I can so relate moments from working at the nursery to attending plant sales and of course knowing and understanding that the garden is never finished. It was the story I could have written but didn't. Thank you Grace Peterson
3461779
I used to live on an acre of land in the suburbs of Boston. My next-door neighbor was a retired college professor, scholar, farmer, New England resourceful - use it till it can't be used any more and then use it for something else - kind of guy. He taught me to make garden implements out of scrap wood or unused material and gave me the book The Man Who Planted Trees. He taught me to revere growing things. I planted more than fifty trees on my property.

This wonderful tale has been reviewed by professionals so I won't attempt it. I can, however, share the memory of my neighbor and state that this book is a pleasure to read.
923080
Reading over the other reviews, most were very satisfied with this book and only a few found fault with it. Casual gardeners won't need anything this extensive, but for the experienced gardener and even the novice gardener who wants to learn more, this is the book to have. It's laid out in a very easy to follow style, making one able to identify plants seen in neighbourhood gardens and parks, and then to find out what their cultural requirements are.
If a desired plant is seen in a gardening magazine,  or a plant and seed catalogue, this book enable you to check whether it would be suitable for your home garden. Saves the trouble of buying plants, only to find that they were suitable for your garden.
Also, if the home gardener would like to find a plant to fill a certain spot, blooming at a certain time of the year, and in specific colours, the format of the book makes it simple to pick out your ideal plant! Each category under the Ornamental Plant Groups (Trees, Shrubs, Climbers, Perennials, etc), are broken down into four seasons when the plant shows its best colours, and the flower colours are separated into groups. It's extremely easy to use.
I've been gardening for almost 30 years & have an extensive gardening and plant library. I agree with the reviewer, Tom Krischan, and this would be the first plant book I would save in a fire too.
3424445
Combining a love of the outdoors and gardening with a fascination with fairies, "Fairy Garden Handbook" is a book that inspires children (and youthful adults!) to create fairy-friendly gardens.  Whether the reader is limited to a small container or an entire backyard, Liza Gardner Walsh offers helpful suggestions and tips to help the garden attract the maximum number of fairy visitors.  She suggests plants to use, necessary tools, the importance of planning your garden, and accessorizing with tiny handmade chairs and tables for the fairies to use. Later chapters encourage readers to enhance the garden for other guests, like birds and butterflies, and finally helps children plan a garden tea party so that they can show off their hard work to their friends.

I think this is a fantastic book.  It really encourages creativity for its readers, offering suggestions but never saying, You must do this or use that!  I appreciated that Walsh took the time to offer suggestions for a variety of settings, recognizing that many readers may live in homes where a backyard isn't available but still finding ways for children to develop a green thumb.  She also reminds her readers throughout the book that while you can often purchase items like birdbaths or miniature furniture, its better to make it yourself  again, fostering that creativity and helping build interest in making.

The initial start-up on some of these projects will no doubt need parental assistance, as the kids learn how to care for plants and build furniture for the fairies.  But after theyve gotten the essentials down, little girls and boys (for who says boys cant love gardening and fairies, too?) will be able to have a lot of fun on their own.  Its a delightful way to introduce gardening and inspire greater interest in spending time in the natural world with just a little fairy magic.
1022589
This book was a lot more than I expected.  I anticipated that it would provide readers with gardening plans or ways to arrange plants together to optimize space.  I expected mostly space saving designs to make the most of limited rooftop space.

However, this book brought forth ideas that I had never considered for a rooftop garden.  I especially appreciated the advice for irrigation concerns.  I think the best part about a rooftop garden is that you would not have to worry about gophers!

These days many more people are concerned with eating foods that are pesticide-free and free from GMO's.  People who are allergic to gluten have to be concerned about contamination from crops grown adjacent to wheat fields.  The best way to be assured that the food you are eating is as pure as you want it to be is to grow it yourself.  Plus, there is a great deal of satisfaction to growing your own food.

The only thing I was hoping for in this book was strategies for use in a patio garden.  Even though it was titled about rooftop gardens, I thought it might possibly suggest strategies for growing vegetables in patio gardens as well.

However, it delivers everything it should to get novice and experienced gardeners alike growing veggies on their rooftops.  I especially enjoyed the pictures of successful rooftop gardens.

This book is a must-read for anyone who is looking for a how-to guide on planning a successful rooftop garden.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.  All opinions are my own.
954373
It doesnt get any more fresh, local and organic than this  flowers and produce grown on your own balcony or rooftop.  Alex Mitchell is the English garden writer (Sunday Telegraph) and crusading gardener who has published this very interesting and highly entertaining book on making good use of very small spaces.  Not everyone, after all, has broad acres of sunny garden space, but everyone wants to live well and eat well.

 The reasons for balcony gardening are several and compelling, starting with the best and most important ones: because you want to and its just plain fun.  More serious reasons are that it transforms often bare and ugly spots into attractive areas bursting with fresh life.  The produce it yields is local and organic, it is riper, tastes better and is better for you.  Did you know the average bit of salad greenery from the grocery store traveled 1400 miles to reach your plate, and are you OK with that?  I, for one, am not.  Balcony and rooftop gardens keep cities cooler, reduce air and noise pollution, help control rainwater runoff, and provide habitat diversity where it is sorely needed.  And, a bonus, most such gardens are out of the reach of many destructive pests like snails and slugs.

 There are two more reasons for this kind of gardening.  First, it is important for every person to have a connection to the land and space we inhabit, and for that land and space to feed us, not just literally but figuratively as well, and this is especially true for urban children.  Even if it is only a simple herb garden, that cup of mint tea of that bit of basil in our salad is an essential connection between us and where we live.  Second, and this is an important reason to read this book even if you do not propose to raise a balcony garden, it teaches the gardener the discipline of using space wisely and treating a wholesome, sunny growing space for the precious commodity it is.  The discipline of space conservation is a quality every gardener should cultivate.

 Mitchells book is filled with practical advice and simple how-to projects to transform small spaces into tiny kitchen gardens, fragrant herbariums and blooming bowers.  The pictures couldn't be more charming and the text is spare and straight-forward.  Among the ideas I found especially appealing were rooftop beekeeping; producing prolific salad greens and cutting herbs; growing robust and useful things like your own garlic, basil and rosemary; making use of even vertical space with grape vines and similar climbers, and so on.  This book focuses on edible plants and produce, but obviously much can also be made of flowers in small spaces.

 Urban gardening in small, wasted spaces is good for the environment, good for your familys table and, above all, good for the soul.  Check out this inspiring book and you will find yourself teeming with creative ideas and inventive ways of thinking about and then using the space around you.
408994
This is a funny little book that will be of interest to a certain kind of audience. It gives you a deeply personal look into what it is like to garden on a community plot (or allotment as it is called in England) in London. In a city where gardening land is scarce and open space is practically non-existent except for the famous parks and palaces of London, there is a strong and deeply entrenched movement in favor of setting land aside for community gardening. Michael Wale is a long-time advocate of this system and an experienced bureaucratic guerrilla in dealing with pettifogging local politicians to defend and expand this movement. He is greatly helped by all those who support local and organic produce, and those who are concerned about genetically altered food crops.
 The allotments featured in this book are four sites in the Acton Gardening Association, and they are located in West London. I loved reading about them because Wale refers to many landmarks of West London that are familiar to me from my business travels there. But what I really liked about his book was its intimate look into what it is like to garden this way. The gossip, the camaraderie, the scheming and scolding of rival plot-holders, the bureaucratic and political infighting with local authorities, the struggles against pressure from developers, and so on. For those of us with the quiet enjoyment of our own land, however small, it is interesting to read about gardening in a precarious but joyfully determined culture such as this.
 Nearly all of this garden concerns the production of vegetable crops, much of it prosaic staples like potatoes, broccoli and onions. I loved how Wale echoed one of my personal crochets by recommending growing your own garlic. Fresh garlic from your own garden is so much better than store-bought; it has an oily, creamy consistency that makes all your cooking taste better. You simply buy 2-3 bulbs of garlic at the store, break them up into individual cloves and stick them in anywhere you have a tiny bit of space, six inches deep and root-side down. Soon you have a supply of lovely fresh garlic. But the best part of this book is the way Wale introduces the reader to all the quirky gardeners who tend their allotments with him. It is a delightful cast of London characters, and strongly reinforces the idea, if any reinforcement were necessary, that gardeners are colorful charactersopinionated, individualistic, willful, cranky, and joyful.
 Wale also tells how he moonlights as a cox for rowers on the nearby Thames and at the famous annual regatta at Henley. I used to row in England, a long time ago now and at Oxford, and I still remember our sadistic cox screaming at us, to get us to row harder, Punish the body, gentlemen! And an allotment gardener is bold and cheeky enough, as Wales colleagues demonstrate, to ring up Buckingham Palace and ask for a steady supply lovely fresh horse manure from the royal stables. And they got it! They do whatever they have to do to survive and prosper in the cramped and competitive world of modern London.
 Physically, this book is handsome, though rather small, measuring only 5.5 by 7.5 inches. It is printed on glossy stock, presumably to accommodate the frequent and very lovely watercolor illustrations by Tim Bramfitt. At 300 words per page and 222 pages, it comes in as a rather brief book, but it is told in a very authentic and distinctive voice, and has a practical few pages at the end, giving useful advice on how to get started with allotment gardening.
 I cannot say this is one of my favorite gardening books, or even in the top half of the gardening books I have read, but if you ever wanted a fascinating insight into a very different way of gardening and the people who are passionate about it, you could do worse than View from a Shed.
4517439
As a garden writer who has studied landscape design, I am awed by the depth of knowledge and expertise Ann Lovejoy shares in this book. It is accessible to gardeners of any level.  It's too heavy to bring with me to the nursery when I shop, but I have copied lists from it!
921122
I like that this book gives you information that you otherwise would not know if starting a garden whether it be flowers or a veggie one. I belong to the town's garden club and by reading this book it will help me not only with my own personal garden but I can share some of the ideas with the other ladies in the club.  Thanks
3980370
This book feels like advice from a friend. Lots of practical ways to use what you grow as well as integrate nature and permaculture into your life.
1790801
This book is close to my heart because it has helped me learn so much about gardening. I am now a pro at it and I love this book now. I am going to implement all the different details which I have learned and I am sure it is going to improve my gardening activities even more. Recommend this book totally!
3065011
Homesteading is becoming a popular thing these days and we too are trying our hand at being more self sufficient. We raise a few hens in our backyard for the eggs, we have tapped our maple trees to make our own syrup and every spring we plant a garden. Alas, we are not very good gardeners. Our first year was mildly successful, but since then it has been a few zucchini, a few carrots, maybe a tomato or two. We blamed the soil, weather and even the pesky rabbits, but I now know, WE were to blame. How do I know we are to blame? Because I just read Vertical Vegetable Gardening by Chris McLaughlin!

Every spring my son and I would put seed to soil and hope. Hope is not enough! Knowledge is the key to gardening and in Chris's book we gained a ton of practical knowledge that I know will lead to success. She covers the topics of soil and composting. She explains the "good" and "bad" insects. And best of all, in my opinion, is chapter 7 A Plant Primer, where she discusses warm and cold season vegetables. How was I to know carrots didn't like full on sun and hot weather!?!? With just this one chapter I will be better prepared on what to plant and when.

No longer will I run to the store and willy nilly buy packets of seeds only to plant them and have my garden end in disappointment! I now have the knowledge to prepare my soil, make my own compost and yes, plant the RIGHT things at the right time with the right about of sun. But Vertical Vegetable Gardening is more then just a basic how to on gardening, it explores the amazing world of growing up instead of out.

We live on just  acre and our backyard must function in many ways and can not be taken up simply by a garden. Thanks to Chris, it doesn't have to be. Her book contains wonderful ideas on gardening structures and containers. Who says your whole garden needs to be in just one place?!?! I learned different areas of my yard (depending on sun light and temperature) are better for different crops. And with the handy DIY and repurposing ideas, we are planning to bring gardening to a few different areas of our yard.

There is also information on "espalier." Which I learned is a pruning technique for fruit trees. When we first moved into our home there was an old, tall, unhealthy apple tree we had to remove. The idea that we could once again grow apples without loosing a large section of yard has me very excited! And not just apples, but other fruit trees as well.

I am very excited to put up a hanging gutter garden. I can't wait to use the "Caveman Sun Blueprint" technique to decide where to build a cinder block herb area. My six year old son even thumbed through the book and can't wait to grow potatoes in a garbage bag. Honestly for the first time I feel like we are prepared to put in a garden and not just buy seeds and hope. I highly recommend you grab a copy of Vertical Vegetable Gardening. You will see gardening in a whole new way!