List of Published Books on Gardening and Natural History--
Some Still In Print and Some Out-of-Print
---The Indoor Water Gardener's How-to Handbook. (1973): A book
about hydroponics for house plants featuring over 150 plant varieties that
not only survive, but grow in water, whether on a windowsill, decorating a
wall, or flourishing under artificial light. ---Bringing the
Outdoors In. (1974): All about growing a wide variety of perennials,
annuals, bulbs, orchids, native plants, and imaginative house plants
indoors using window greenhouses. ---Growing and Decorating with
Grasses. (1977): The first popular book on using ornamental grasses in
the garden and as additions to floral arrangements and
bouquets.
---Gardens by Design. (1986): Step-by-step plans for
twelve imaginative gardens ranging from a garden of all annuals to a
garden for winter to a meadow garden. Over 200 plants are
illustrated.
---The Annual Garden. (1987): Listed as on of the
50 great garden books by the National Agricultural Library, the book deals
with annual plants both for flowers or foliage and includes many tropicals
used as garden annuals. ---American Gardens. (1988): A
photographic celebration featuring thirty of the finest private gardens
from all over the United States. The text focuses on the inspiring details
and imaginative solutions that makes these gardens so special and their
individual gardeners so unique.
---A Year of Flowers. (1989): Here's how to grow over 150
flowering plants, including annuals, perennials, bulbs, wildflowers,
everlastings, and a host of house plants. It's a month-by-month salute to
flowers.
---The Wild Gardener. (1991): The Wild Gardener
was named one of the 75 best gardening books of the 20th Century by the
American Horticultural Society. The book salutes the American garden as a
refuge from the teeming world that surrounds today's home and hearth and
the daily threats that plague our existence.
---Secrets of the Great
Gardeners. (1991): Originally entitled Secrets of the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden the name was changed by the editorial department of
Summit Books (a branch of Simon & Schuster) because they thought
nobody knew anything about Brooklyn, much less a great botanic garden
located in its domain. Needless to say the book features on-the-spot
interviews with the gardeners who make the BBG such a marvelous place to
visit. ---Tough Plants for Tough Places. (1992): The original
title for the original book that dealt with 101 easy-care plants for every
part of your yard. "It's always fun to romp through another garden read
with Peter Loewer," said The New York Times. So popular that a
garden book from England used the title for American audiences.
---The Evening Garden.(1993): The first complete (and only serious) book ever written about gardening with night-blooming and night-fragrant plants sold well 1994 but has been out-of-print since 1995 when, due to financial shennanagans, the great Macmillan Company went belly-up! "With this book," wrote Pamela Harper, author of Designing with Perennials, "Loewer treads new ground, covering a neglected gardening topic comprehensively, lucidly, with infectious enthusiasm."
And now thanks to Timber Press, America's premium publisher of gardening books from around the world, The Evening Garden is again available at bookstores around the country (including Canada and Great Britian where it's on sale at Kew Gardens).
---The New Small Garden. (1994): Twenty-six garden designs and hundreds of
plant descriptions especially for gardening in the small spaces of a
condominium patio, a townhouse courtyard, or backyard
corner. ---Seeds. (1995): The life of a garden begins and ends
with a seed. This book gives explanations of virtually everything that
happens from the production of a seed (including the genetics involved) to
seed germination. To be published again by Timber Press in 2004.
---Thoreau's Garden. (1996): A combination of
insightful excerpts from the journals of Henry Thoreau and Loewer's
botanical illustrations and comments on more than fifty native plants that
were favorites of Thoreau's and grow in Loewer's Asheville gardens. This edition is the new paperback edition from Stackpole Press..
---Winter Gardening in the Southeast. (1997):
Winter-bound gardeners from USDA Zone 6 and south, will enjoy this
armchair walk though the snow- or ice-threatened garden, with Loewer
extolling the virtues and exposing the vices of a host of plants, all
beautifully illustrated with Larry Mellichamp's
photographs.
---Fragrant Gardens. (1999): One of the delights of
a garden are the wonderful fragrances provided by a number of beautiful
and not-so-beautiful flowers. Straightforward garden care advice includes
information on handling different soil types, controlling pests, creating
raised beds, and growing all those blossoms with perfumes that delight the
nose and scent the garden air. Ever smelled a night-blooming daylily in full bloom?
---Solving Weed Problems. (2001): They seed, they sprout, and often take over local worlds turning our pride and joy into a maelstrom of malcontented plants, plants with a mission to attack! Some weeds defy the might of the gardener but luckily they are few and far between. Most weeds, once we understand their likes and dislikes, will succumb to the will of the gardener, usually requiring only a steady hand and a sharp knife or hoe. Solving Weed Problems is divided into sections covering annual and perennial weeds, then shrubs and trees, aquatic weeds, and a number of the worst lawn weeds. A few weeds stand up to the worst we have to offer but then the text is honest and tells the reader that a trip to the local extension service is required (I never recommend deadly herbicides but the government sometimes does).
---Solving Deer Problems. (2003): They breed, they snout, and eat up everything in sight, stopping only at oleander and antique brick. Fear the deer! Nature has never invented a more efficient killing maching--at least from the point of view of garden plants. Able to leap an eight-foot fence, sneak silently through the suburbs at night, and outrun a greyhound (not to mention a beagle or Labrador retriever), the deer is the number on enemy not only of the gardener but also of anyone who wants to relax in the backyard. This book concentrates on the best answers to the growing deer problem in these United States. You can love these animals but keep your affection for the deer roaming the great outdoors and not nibbling on your roses or devouring your shrubs.
---Small-Space Gardening. (2003): There's no end to the advantages of gardening in containers, and this new book on the subject provides a perfect introduction. Containers, of course, are the norm in cities and suburbs, where space is at a premium, but even gardeners with plenty of room will appreciate the benefits of container planting. Potted plants dress up front walks, hang brightly from the limbs of trees, and energize a deck with color and life. They are a great laboratory for "experiments," and allow a gardener to grow plants that wouldn't otherwise winter over in northerly climate zones. Older gardeners also love container gardening for its relative simplicity and east of maintenance. This book covers light, dormancy, temperature, and watering, potting soils and mixes, vertical gardens, water gardens, growing fruits in pots, forcing bulbs, bonsai hostas, ornamental grasses, bamboos, perennials, conifers, alpine pots, and even heavy-metal gardening.
---Jefferson's Garden. (2004): This book is in homage to one of the truly great Americans. Instead of focusing on his political accomplishments, Jefferson's Garden deals with the many fascinating plants that he brought to Monticello over a lifetime of gardening. Included in the many plant biographies are scientific and common name derivations, where the plants came from and how Jefferson learned about their existence, and many more facts about their place on the planet. Each plant is illustrated with a pen and ink rendering of both leaf and flower.
---Ornamental Grasses for the Southeast (2004): Ornamental grasses have outlived their reputation for being an oddity or a sometime thing in the garden and have, instead, become one of those plant families that are now in the perennial mainstream and stars of the garden across the country. But the southern climate is a lot warmer than New York or Pennsylvania so now there's a book to be published in February that covers all the grasses that do their best when the weather's hot and sunny--not to mention hot and damp! Even Zone 10 and the heat of Southern Florida has a niche in the contents of this book! And the illustrations: They are large photos full of color and botancial renderings of the more unusual
Children's Books (Illustrated by Jean Jenkins)---The
Inside-Out Stomach. (1990): From the one-celled amoeba to the largest
invertebrate, the giant, fifty-foot squid, here's a book about all those
animals that exist without the backbones that make standing upright such
an easy thing for human beings (not to mention dogs and cats), to
do. ---Pond Water Zoo. (1996): A drop of pond water is crowded
with thousands of living things too small to be seen by the human eye.
Diatoms live in beautifully etched glass like shells while algaes float
effortlessly in the water like long strings of green pearls.Pond Water
Zoo brings this world within the reach of anyone with a simple
microscope and a glass of pond water. ---The Moonflower. (1997):
When the sun sets and the moon shimmers above, the night comes alive. Bats
swoop, hawkmoths flit, owls hunt, and the moonflower unfurls for its one
night in the moonlight. This is a great book to introduce children to the
marvels of nature, wonders that seem to come alive when the sun begins to
set.
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