Book by Jaret C Daniels
- Publisher: Adventure Publications, 2020
- Paperback: 276 pages
- ISBN-10: 1591939410
- Dimensions: 8” X 10”
- Price: $36.59 (Amazon.ca – note, this book is available on Kindle for $16.32); $16.49 (Amazon.com)
This is, indeed, a beautiful book to add to your collection. The photos are large, sharp and nicely laid out. A brief description of each plant, including its bloom period and its growing conditions, and which groups of insects it’s important to make this book stand out.
The interesting tables at both the beginning and end of the book are helpful as well. The tables at the front summarize the information on the plant pages, while at the back of the book, tables show which plants are suitable as bird food and or for nesting, and which are good hummingbird plants. Finally there is a section called Larval Host List. All great and useful ideas. But I struggle with 3 things in particular about the book (four, if you count the lack of an index).
The first problem is its organizational scheme – plants are grouped by light requirements: full sun, full sun to partial shade, and partial shade to full shade. In theory this sounds great. Unfortunately, many native plants don’t fall neatly into one of the categories. For instance, another book I recently reviewed on Amazon.ca lists Aquilegia canadensis (wild columbine) as a full sun plant. This book puts it into the part shade to full shade section. In fact, both are right as it will do just fine in all the categories. But what exacerbates the problem with this book is that there is no index, so if you want to look up a particular plant, you have to figure out WHERE the author thinks it grows.
The second problem (again, no index makes it worse) is that the book lists the plants in each section in alphabetic order by common name. Using Aquilegia canadensis again as my example, the author calls it Red Columbine, whereas most folk I know call it wild columbine, but it is also known as Canadian columbine, common American columbine, Jack-in-trousers, rock lily, and even as cluckies, depending on where you’re from. This is why native plant gardeners in particular often prefer scientific names. It took me a while to find this plant’s listing in the book because I’ve never known it as red columbine. To be fair, the author is an entomologist (bug person) not a botanist (plant person) so perhaps he was unaware that native plant names can be so different depending on where you live.
My final (and a somewhat minor) complaint is in what otherwise appears to be a useful introduction – under the heading Improving the Soil. Unless you are planting into an abandoned quarry or gravel pit, you probably should not add compost or animal manure as the author recommends. Native plants have evolved the ability to extract nutrients and moisture from deep in the soil profile, and fertilizing them just tends to make the plants tall, leggy and weak-stemmed (I speak from experience, as I made this mistake with the first flower bed I planted with native species – and it took years to use up the excess nutrients in the soil).
However, despite my complaints about the book, I am happy to keep in on my shelf for the sheer beauty of the photography in it. Although it is paperback, I could easily see this as a hard-cover coffee table book, the pictures are that nice. On a snowy winter’s day, it’s a lovely book to browse through while I dream of spring.