One of the books that I am most looking forward to this year is The New Low-Maintenance Garden. I love working in my garden, but I also love cooking, movies, teasing the cats, knitting, bike rides, dancing… and on and on. So the idea of a low-maintenance garden is a “have your garden and eat it too” best case scenario to me. Plus the book is gorgeous! Here’s an excerpt from Val’s introduction, where she explains how she came around to the low-maintenance garden ideal.

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I’ve heard rumors that even the best gardeners kill plants. I’ve also heard that the truly enlightened don’t waste time on regret – move on, get another plant, put it in another place, see what happens.

I admire this. I picture experienced gardeners as being kind of like spies or tough detectives in novels or on television. Confident, ready for anything, letting bygones be bygones. (At least, that’s how I like my detectives. None of this pesky humanity business for me. There’s no room for doubt in a detective!)

I have not yet reached that enlightened state. I still go through lots of guilt when one of my plants dies because of me. I have a list in my head. Recently, there is my viburnum. Or my echinacea that I forgot to water one weekend, and that turned into a crispy array of tiny leaves. It looked like what herbs are supposed to look like when you hang them upside down in a cool dry place for three months.

As a sort of penance, I tend to water things that I’m convinced are dead. I think of it as buying my way into the good graces of the departed spirit of my plant. (Too much anthropomorphizing can do that to a girl.)

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I’m going to spill a dirty secret—not everyone at Timber Press is a gardener. Or rather, not everyone is an avid gardener. Take me for example. I have a few houseplants (mostly succulents that thrive on neglect) in my apartment, but no actual plot of land to grow anything on. I like to think that someday I’ll own a home with a yard full of vegetables and ornamental grasses. So, I guess I am an imaginary gardener.

The one thing everyone at Timber Press does have in common (as do most people who work in publishing) is a life-long love of books. Book chatter in our office is common, as is sharing books. We actually had a short-lived book club that flamed out after a few months (agreeing on what to read was a real struggle).

Neal and I had one of these fun book chats Wednesday. I just saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and remarked on how as a child I didn’t like fantasy. The conversation got me thinking about what kind of reader you become based on what you chose when you were younger. So I sent an email around asking for everyone’s favorite book from their childhood. The reaction was amazing—everyone quickly started buzzing about books. I can still hear people now talking about Maurice Sendak! The wide-ranging list includes:

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When I was younger, one of my favorite books was Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel. It’s a looong book, tracing the life of a young Cro-Magnon girl being raised by a clan of Neanderthals over 30,000 years ago.

I was most fascinated by the herbal lore in the book. The medicine woman of the Clan was very knowledgeable about thousands of plants and their medicinal properties, and since they had no written language she knew it all by heart. Reading about her knowledge was the first time that I had really thought about plants having different properties and uses–other than building forts, of course. The thought of one plant being good for headaches AND for setting bones opened up a whole new world. (Plus, I really wanted to be the know-it-all who always knew what kind of herb to administer. Yes, I was a self-important child–why do you ask?)

Sadly, I don’t think that I’ll be able to memorize all the plants in existence, even if I eat copious quantities of Ginkgo biloba. I’m going to have to count on written language. Specifically, I can look at our new book, Native American Medicinal Plants.

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I am currently researching magazines as I prepare for a trip to New York to pitch Timber Press story and segment ideas to editors and television producers. The three that I have been reading this week–Every Day With Rachael Ray, Real Simple, and Metropolitan Home–have very different editorial styles and don’t have a strong focus on gardening, though they all dabble a little bit.

You can probably imagine my surprise then when reading the July/August Metropolitan Home’s “Letter from the Editor” about the joys and trials of her gardening experiences over the past few years. Having just started my first garden this year, it is a relief to know that some of the problems I’m facing aren’t just because I’m inexperienced — insects are nondiscriminatory when it comes to gardens, beginner or experienced, and I’m just happy I don’t have horses anywhere nearby that can lean over the fence and snack on my heirloom green tomatoes!

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If you grow tomatoes in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic region, you need to read Friday’s New York Times article on late blight. It’s scary to think that a fungus can spread so quickly from garden center to home garden. Even scarier? A strain of the same disease is what caused the Irish potato famine.

The article includes tips on what to look for and how to remove affected plants. It also recommends using the fungicide chlorothalonil (a synthetic protectant that prevents disease by blocking its entry into the surface of the plant) to protect tomatoes not yet affected. Which brings is to the question of chemicals…

I looked up chlorothalonil in Jeff Gillman’s The Truth About Organic Gardening. After an explanation of the difference between the three types of synthetic chemicals used for disease control (plant activators, systemics, and protectants), he lists what he sees as the benefits and drawbacks of using synthetic protecants. I’ll let you decide what is the right choice for you and your garden:

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One of the joys of summer is that I very rarely have to mow my lawn. (I never water it, so I don’t have to worry about that either–hooray for grasses going dormant, I say.) This year I may have called a moratorium on mowing my grass a little bit early–instead of being short and dead all summer, the grass is sending up gorgeous, misty spikes of seeds. I am enchanted.

I have grasses sending seed sprays through my authentically weatherbeaten fence:

I don’t have the skills to capture the gorgeousness, but rest assured, it is a lovely effect. I expect a lifestyle magazine to call at any moment–the weathered-ness of my fence, especially, is hard to beat.

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I was reading through Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest today while working on a review copy mailing. I don’t really know a lot about mushrooms — I have never been foraging and I don’t like them in my food — but I do know that it is an immensely popular activity in the Pacific Northwest. After reading through the introduction, I had a general sense of what mushrooms are, where you can find them, general guidelines for collecting, and how to avoid getting poisoned. I actually feel like I could do this (with some guidance)!

So, with safety in mind, a few tips on how not to get poisoned while out foraging for mushrooms.

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Plant explorer Dan Hinkley came through Portland recently, and told stories of seed collecting and traveling the world. His most recent book, The Explorer’s Garden: Shrubs and Vines from the Four Corners of the World, includes excerpts from his garden journals. I imagine that it’s the best possible way to keep track of all the many plants that he has encountered during his travels, in addition to the usual stories and situations that accompany traveling. Here is an excerpt from his chapter on the Azara species.

This morning it was proven again that there is nothing that elongates a mile more efficiently, or that more lays to ruin the enjoyment of the moment, than an empty gas tank, a cognizance that has arisen in human consciousness swiftly and that will hopefully depart in same fashion. We left our lodging in Temuco in the dark this morning at 5:30, and I had not filled the tank as planned when we had arrived in town the night before. Heading toward Conguillio for a long day’s outing, lost and fogged by caffeine withdrawal, and hobbled by our pathetic command of the language, I watched the gauge drop from really low to really screwed. It was my fault. Coasting a Chilean secondary road on a prayer of fume, we finally found gas and Nescafé in an unlikely village. I celebrated by procuring a day-old potato and beef empanada for breakfast.

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Timber Press has been in interested in books on dramatic plant colors since we published (in North America) Deni Bown’s Alba in 1989. (That book was inspired by the fad for white gardens in the 1980’s based on Vita Sackville-West’s famous white-flower garden. Alas, it may be some time before white gardens return to general popularity. We hope to commission a new edition if they do.) Our next was Book of Blue Flowers, which we published in 2000, making much of the fact that blue is the rarest hue in nature. This book is still in print in paperback.

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