It’s time for another library book review!

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that my mom goes to the library on a regular basis.  So when I’m visiting her I tag along and check out what her library has to offer.

Unfortunately, I seem to have exhausted their supply of ‘decorating with vintage stuff’ type books.  They didn’t have anything on the shelf in this category that I hadn’t already checked out.

So I decided to check out their gardening section next, but it seems as though books on gardening aren’t much of a draw in the desert!  For obvious reasons (they currently have a watering ban that only allows them to water plants once a week).

I did find one book on landscape design, and a handful of ‘garden adjacent’ books to check out though.

I’ll start with the prettiest of the books, which was Vintage Roses.

This book is absolutely chalk full of gorgeous photos of roses.

It begins with a brief section on the history of roses, then goes on to highlight specific varieties which are broken down into four categories; classic blooms, dramatic flowers, romantic beauties and fragrant delights.

Each rose looks positively drool-worthy to me.

I wish that I could get better results with roses here in my garden.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the patience to deal with the many challenges of growing roses, including those nasty Japanese beetles that turn their leaves into Swiss cheese every year.  I still have one old fashioned shrub rose (the easiest type to grow) that I try to train up a metal garden obelisk each year with very limited success.

My neighbor Arlene had a lovely rose garden for decades until she finally gave up the roses back in 2018.  I found quite a few local readers here on the blog that were willing to take them for their own gardens.

If you have any interest at all in roses, you would really enjoy this book.  I also think it would make an awesome gift for a rose lover.

Next up in the library book pile is Decorating with Plants.

This books gives a lot of detail on the growing needs of specific varieties of house plants.

If you are getting into house plants, this book would be a great resource.  They had a page on Streptocarpus, or Cape Primrose, and after reading it I realized I was making some mistakes with the Streptocarpus that I brought into the house this winter.

It looked great when I first brought it in (above), but I haven’t seen many flowers on it all winter.  The foliage is lush and green though.  Apparently I shouldn’t be feeding it over the winter, too much fertilizing can cause lush foliage and no flowers.

But back to the book.  This one also contains room by room ideas on displaying your houseplants like this vertical garden for a foyer.

Or this idea of filling your bathroom with ferns.

The third book in my pile also features houseplants and is called Plant Craft.

This books features 30 specific craft projects that feature plants.  Mostly indoor, but there were a handful of outside projects too.

I have to admit that I really only found two projects that appealed to me, the first being a simple terrarium.

But most of us could probably figure out how to plant a terrarium without a book.

There was also a section on how to make a Kokedama.

If you aren’t familiar, Kokedama is the Japanese art of growing plants in a moss-covered ball of soil wrapped with string.  I’ve debated trying to make one of these, but in the end decided that caring for it would probably be a bit too fussy for me.

Last up is the Encyclopedia of Landscape Design.

This is one of those DK books (published by Dorling Kindersley).  They specialize in illustrated reference books.  I absolutely love their travel guide books.

This book is packed with tons of info on everything from creating a site plan …

to ways to create screens or boundaries.

They also have lots of info on plants including tree, shrubs and perennials.

Unfortunately quite a lot of the plants they featured were not hardy in my zone 5a (formerly 4b) garden.

Still, this book would be a great resource if you are starting from scratch with some landscaping.

I hope you found this library book review of interest.  If you’d like to check out some of my other library book reviews, just click on the photos below to head to those posts.