Brooklyn Botanic Garden Gardener's Desk Reference

Don't plan on getting a lot accomplished for the first week or so that this book is in your house. It may be a reference, but it behaves like a sponge, sucking up any and all attention you happen to cast its way. Take, for example, the chapter called "Botany for Gardeners." High-school biology was never this interesting. The chapter on "Plant Conservation," which includes sections on plant diversity as well as vanishing plants, is frightening. Ever think you would be frightened by a gardening text?

Reference, however, is the key word here--for this is a reference, and not a final word (should such a thing even exist). With chapters devoted to natural gardening, kitchen gardening, ornamental gardening, indoor and city gardening, and safe pest control, this monster-size book (and undertaking)--more than 800 pages--is the place to start looking for just about any kind of information on gardening and plants. It's the desk version of Think Globally, Act Locally in that it gives a fairly good idea of where to go to flesh out any information. One regret: the short shrift given mushrooms, whose only appearance is among poisonous plants. One can usually expect more of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden than this kind of backhand to the chops.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden couldn't be a better place to launch such a project as the Gardener's Desk Reference. It has been a pioneer in gardening publications for a century, and gardeners everywhere owe it a real debt. --Schuyler Ingle