Book Review: Fallscaping

I blame this book for my lack of sleep in the last 6 weeks.

I checked Fallscaping by Nancy J. Ondra and Stephanie Cohen, photography by Rob Cardillo (Storey, 2007) out of the library and plan to keep it the maximum allowed 9 weeks because I go through it every couple days and am completely dazzled. It's pictures are absolutely haunting - beautifully juxtaposed 'Hopi Red Dye' Amaranth with 'Lemon Queen' perennial sunflower sent me on a quest to try to find this particular species of Amaranth (John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds). It's enough to make your heart skip a beat.

Because I am a relative newcomer to gardening by most standards, I've had a limited number of years to learn about different plants and flowers. This book was one that exposed me to many I'd never heard of or just had a vague knowledge about. Plants I never really cared for one way or another like pink muhy grass. The authors brilliantly showed how this plant would work in my garden, and showed others that would work with it creating a multi-colored, layered effect.

If this was just a book of beautiful pictures of beautiful gardens, that would have been more than enough for me. However, the writing, advice, and techniques presented in the book are superb! The book is written in a very casual manner but is completely classy. The advice is easy enough for a beginner to understand, but technical enough that a master gardener/expert would be satisfied with the book as well. I also appreciate the 10" x 10" book format. I think it allows for larger pictures that make all the difference.

I could go on and on here, but if you are interested in the book, I would suggest you head over to Amazon and click on the book to look inside. There are plenty of pages to pique your interest, and if you're like me, you'll go gaga over the excellent pictures.