Customer Reviews

Bruce and Sharon Asakawa's California Gardener's Guide

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A well written and illustrated guide to the 165 or so plants that grow well in the author's portion of California. The book must be faulted for not including plants that grow well and provide color in the arid and desert regions of the state. Certainly water wise gardening should be included. No mention is made of the use of California native plants in the garden. A beginning gardener will be better served by Sunset's WESTERN GARDEN BOOK. Those who will admit to living in an arid region (this includes Los Angeles) will find Eric Johnson's JOHNSON'S GUIDE TO GARDENING: PLANTS FOR THE ARID WEST of great value for its coverage of native plants. Desert gardeners will need the Coachella Valley Water District's LUSH & EFFICIENT: GARDENING IN THE COACHELLA VALLEY as their guide to effective desert gardening.

This book is ok because it has nice pictures and stories. I do like it because it has a "when to plant" reference as well as sun exposure, bloom time and color and other useful information. I'm a Northern California gardner and found this book to be somewhat specific to Southern California in plant selection, although they do show, for each plant, a map of Caifornia where each plant would grow. I found Northern California Gardening: A Month-By-Month Guide by Katherine Grace Endicott a great book and of course Sunset's Western Garden book.

I agree with the other reviewers that Sunset's Western Garden Guide is the essential book. My only complaint with that book is while it is quite extensive, the small illustrated drawings are not always ideal for identifying unknown plants and the depth is occasionally lacking. I bought this book (cheap at a booksale) because it focused on a smaller number of plants (admittedly oriented toward Southern California), had nice big photographs of each plant and went into a little bit more depth (fertilizer ratios to use, specific planting directions, soil ph numbers, etc.)

The chapter on Perennials includes 15 plants. That's all, just 15. The chapter on Roses discusses 5 plants, one of each variety. I think there are a few more roses that do well in California. ;-)

Just when you want to read more it stops and moves on to the next chapter. I like Asakawa's writing style but we need more material!

So why did I even buy this book? It's well written with nice photographs and mainly because it focuses on California...how well these plants perform in California is what concerns me, I don't care how well they grow in the mid-west or north-east. It's that perspective that makes this book interesting. This book is good for a newbie California gardener.

Being a newcomer to gardening, I needed an experienced teacher. With "Bruce and Sharon Asakawa's California Gardener's Guide," I got not one, but two patient, knowledgeable, and thorough teachers. This is the best gardening book I've found on the market.

Bruce and Sharon sectioned the book so that you can search by topics. As you would look for the pasta section in your favorite cookbook, you can easily search out the best flowers, ground cover, or trees for your backyard.

Each time you open to the flower or plant your inquiring about, you get two pages of information. One page has a picture, a description, and a little history on that plant. On the other page, you get a useful guide suggesting where to situate it your garden, how to care for it, and when it blooms. Additionally, you'll find easy to understand icons that tell you if the flowers attract butterflies, bees, or hummingbirds.

Whether you're just a beginner or an expert gardener, this book is easy to understand, and especially helpful if you live in California. I've recommended it to all of my friends and I'd recommend it to you too.

If you want something that lists a great deal of plants, look to the mainstays like "Sunset's Western Garden Book" or "American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants". What I like about this book is the full color illustrations, interesting lore about each plant, and the information about planting and problems with each type of plant.

I see it more like a look into the authors' favorite plants, maybe a palette for landscaping, not a all encompasing guide in either taxinomy or technique.

It would fail in that regard.

Great compainion book. Nice big pictures. Common and botanical names listed. Zone map listed with each plant. Very clear and simple using both words and symbols.

Perfect for the new or advanced gardening enthusiast. Details shurbs, trees, ground cover, roses, berries, citrus trees, and more. Shows beautiful pictures, which plants attract bees/butterflies/hummingbirds, how to care for the plants, problems certain plants encounter and how to handle them, and much more. Gives suggestions on which plants grow best to eachother, which are fragrant, and the author's opinions on the best hybrids for each plant. Excellent choice to peruse for ideas for your outside landscaping needs in California.

Sorry, but this is a terrible "gardener's guide". I've never heard this guy's radio show; his text introducing each plant is chatty and engaging, so I expect that's true of his on-air personality too. And this book might have worked a bit better if it were just called "My Favorite Plants" or something that clearly indicated its real, extremely limited scope. But it would still be sloppy, poorly documented, and oddly dowdy (this is the only book I've seen published so recently that utterly ignores CA natives like salvia - one sideways mention as something not to plant your canna lilies next to - but goes on at length about plants like, well, canna lilies, which are a perfectly nice but grandmotherly legacy of the tiki-bar phase of American landscaping).
As for incomplete: The palm tree section of the book has exactly 5 plants listed, conspicuously not including the only palm native to CA, and conspicuously including a plant (sago) that is not a palm. Perhaps the "California Houseplants" section (huh?) could have been excised to provide more space for actual California-related gardening information; as far as I know African Violets can grow in Minnesota living rooms too.
Poorly documented and sloppy? Here are two things I noticed just leafing through. First: the dwarf coyote bush, as described on page 126, "quickly spreads to ten feet wide", and there's a caution about close planting resulting in woody undergrowth. But the very next page suggests planting them as close as 3 feet apart. Second: the pistachio tree entry, which really just mystifies me. Pistachios are grown as a crop up and down the Central and San Joaquin Valleys; the author appears to know this, since on page 416 (in the appendix) he notes that the tree he recommends was first introduced at a USDA station in Chico, and in his page 182 intro to the tree, he notes it prefers hot, dry summers and relatively cold winters. But page 183's "climate and culture" map indicates a preferred planting range of USDA zones 10 and 11, consisting solely of some SE desert down near Arizona, and an extremely narrow, non-contiguous coastal strip from San Diego to north of San Francisco. Yes, that does include the cold-in-summer fog belt of the Bay Area, and there as with most of that coastal strip, "cold" in the winter means 50 degrees.
Errors and/or misstatements like this just seem neglectful to the point of insult, and there are lots of them. I picked this up at a garage sale, so it won't hurt much to recycle it.

This book is nicely photographed, well-written, and proffers many good ideas for a California gardener. It is, however, somewhat skimpy when it comes to detailed information on any particular plant it addresses in these pages. I think most people would want more information on care and propagation of these specific plants.