Customer Reviews

Hardy Gingers: Including Hedychium, Roscoea, and Zingiber (Royal Horticultural Society Plant Collector Guide)

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When I first heard about this new ginger book and saw the negative comments on GardenWeb, I was in no hurry to get it. Several people said much of it was obviously taken from my own website. But recently when ordering another book, I needed something else to bring the order to $25 for the free shipping.

I was pleasantly surprised! This is a pretty darn good job at describing hardy gingers for the temperate or sub tropical garden. Some of the cultivars had to come from my website but there was also a lot of original research and solid information from other sources. Much of it is slanted toward the UK/British climate, but also for gardeners in the southern USA.

I can now recommend this book to anyone interested in collecting and growing gingers, including Costaceae (spiral gingers) as well as Zingiberaceae (true gingers).

T.M.E. Branney is co-owner of a nursery that specializes in rare, temperate-woodland plants, and is also a garden designer: this professional background lends well to a unique, authoritative guide in Hardy Gingers Including Hedychium, Roscoea And Zingiber. Color photos of hardy gingers supplement notes on growing needs, rarity, plant origins and history, and propagation. While most may associate ginger with tropical climates, it's the more unusual temperate-zone gingers that are the focus here - and there's a wealth of them.

I'm a picture person. I first base my decidisons on the photos than refer to the info about that plant. This book has good info on the different gingers but, I wish there were more photos. What's there are good, just want more! I couldn' find info on some of my gingers that I have, which makes it a little frustrating. But there is general info on the species, just not on a lot of indivdual gingers.
Though, over all the book is interesting.

Very good book and very good services of Amazon. Arrived in excellent shape!!

Book promissed a lot and it's true it's one of the best books I've read of Gingers. The information is complete and gives you an idea what to expect from a certain plant. For me it's a kind of "bible" for the plants I wish to buy.

I can recommended this book to everyone who loves gingers!!

Gr. Miranda

Following the Introduction, through the first seven chapters this study considers various aspects of hardy gingers and how to grow them: Botany; Ecology; Cultivation; Propagation; Culinary and Medical Use; Cut Flower Use; Landscaping Use. Chapter eight which comprises the bulk of the book is a listing of the species and cultivars by genus: Alpinia; Amomum; Boesenbergia; Caulokaempferia; Cautleya; Costus; Curcuma; Globba; Hedychium; Hemiorchis; Kaempferia; Roscoea; Siphonochilus; Zingiber, and includes the individual descriptions of the hardy species, cultivars and hybrids. Chapter nine looks at growing tropical gingers. Also included is Where to Buy Gingers and Where to See Gingers, both in the UK and the USA; and a list of on-line ginger discussion groups. There is also a bibliography.

The plant descriptions are informative, often quite extensive, and interesting to read. The book also includes 90 colour photographs of the plants.

This is certainly a very useful and accessible guide. Most of the plant entries provide before going into the description the plant's dimensions and also the minimum temperature it requires. The descriptions usually provide clear indications as to the plants garden requirements and its suitability to frosty gardens. While there are many plants included here in reality the number suitable for gardens that experience any number of sub-zero temperatures is not so many.

This is a very useful guide, makes for good reading, and will possibly introduce the gardener to a few otherwise little known plants.

Very timely issue of hardy gingers. It covers most recent results of scientific and applied science of this group. Only lucks much color plates, which would be more help to look into this complicated but variable flower world.

The text seems decent but one of my main reasons for purchasing this book was to help me select specimens for a landscaping project. The book description as well as the book's actual table of contents incorrectly lists a number of color plates that are not found in the paperback edition. The paperback version contains only poor quality black and white images. As a result, the book was of little use to me when compared to information and photos that were available on the internet. I have subsequently returned it.

I was disappointed in that the Table of Contents shown in the preview lists color plates. However, when I got the book, I found that all of the pictures were black and white. This is NOT what is shown in the online listing.