The Washington Post Garden Book: The Ultimate Guide to Gardening in Greater Washington and the Mid-Atlantic Region

The Washington Post Garden Book: The Ultimate Guide to Gardening in Greater Washington and the Mid-Atlantic Region

Which plants do best - and worst - in Greater Washignton and the Mid-Atlantic region? How do you transform a neglected yard into a wondrous garden while minimizing the need for check-writing, maintenance and toxic chemicals? How can you create a flowing landscape with breathtaking colors and forms that will enchant you year round, not just seperate flower beds that bloom briefly in spring or summer? You'll find the answers to these questions - and many more - in this extraordinary guide, which is as masterfully written and beautifully illustrated as it is useful. Whether you have an urban backyard, a suburban landscape, a rural spread or an apartment balcony, this is your essential reference for gardening in Washington, Virginia, Maryland, and beyond. In addition to all the basics on soil composition, tools, drainage, pruning and the like, the guide provides what you need on an exceptional array of subjects. Adrain Higgins, garden editor and writer for The Washington Post's Home section, is a prize winning author whose work also has appeared in House and Garden, Garden Design, Horticulture and other publications. He is the author of The Secret Gardens of Georgetown. Susan Davis is a painter, muralist and illustrator. Her art has graced the cover of The New Yorker magazine, the pages of The Washington Post and noted posters, including the official one for a presidential inauguration. She has illustrated a number of books. The Year-Round Garden Once, After I wrote an article about the problems of deer eating plants, an animal lover called to complain that all gardeners were vain, and they had no right to grow those flowers for their own glory and then carp when a hungry Bambi showed up. She was right in one sense: More than a few gardeners are vain. They take great pride in their little Edens, and some are not above showing them off. She was mistaken, however, in believing it wrong to deter deer. How many people want deer in their homes? The caller did not seem to understand that gardens are integral parts of our homes, essentially oudoor rooms. They are dinig rooms where we take our meals on patios and living rooms where we entertain guests and sometimes hold our weddings. They are playrooms for our children and bedrooms where we doze on hammocks. They are outside dens where we read books beneath trees and extensions of kitchens where we grow and gather vegetables and herbs. They are open-air studios where we design and nurture works of living art, punctuated with paths and ponds, gates and gazebos, benches and borders, and in the process nourish our souls. This guide for Greater Washington and the Mid-Atlantic region is designed to help you develop and delight in the garden of your choice, whether you have an urban backyard, a suburban landscape, a rural spread or an apartment balcony. But it especially encourages you to think about creating a year-round garden, to look for the ornament of leaves, bark and berries as well as of flowers, to imagine blooms tucked amid a larger canvas of trees, shrubs, ground covers, herbs and ferns. In the process, you will discover many enchanting plants that appeal through three or four seasons, not just two weeks in spring. Unfortunately, there is a lingering notion that gardening centers on flowers, arranged in individual beds. This idea first took hold in the 19th century, when gardeners also used dynamite to prepare planting holes. We no longer employ high explosives, but, alas, we still lean too much on seperate groupings of annuals like marigolds and ageratum, wax begonias and red salvias. Gardens that rely less on fleeting floer displays and more on a year-round tapestry of plant forms and foliage are not only more rewarding aesthetically. They also have practical advantages, such as minimizing requirements for maintenance, for chemicals and for check-writing. A large fothergilla, for example, is not as showy as a rhodedendron that is briefly in flower, but its leaves will look clean and untroubled in high summer, it won't need chemical support, and its fall coloration will be breathtaking. By all means use forsythias, rhododendrons, azaleas or lilacs, but don't depend on them too heavily, especially not if you are sacrificing plants that provide longer-lasting joy. Mindful of our busy lives and of the expense of gardening, the guide notes other ways as well to create low-maintenance paradises while holding down costs. This is just one reason, for example, why the book favors wonderful perennials that flower for long periods and, without much work by the gardener, are reborn year after year. You also will find here other ways of avoiding chemicals. In Books and on radio, gardeners too often are encouraged to amek free use of herbicides and pesticides. this is an anachronism, not only because many gardeners today feel uncomfortable about damaging the environment but because there are less toxic alternatives, including horticultural oils, insecticidal soaps an