Customer Reviews

Low Water Use Plants: For California And The Southwest

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I found out about this book from a class that I took at the Desert Botanical Gardens here in Phoenix. It is a great addition to Judy Mielke's book, Native Plants for Soutwestern Landscapes and Mary Rose Duffield's book, Plants for Dry Climates. Carol Shuler has some great charts toward the back of the book on trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and accent plants. I love the section on horticulture which covers some basic design principles. There are also lots of great pictures throughout and great explanations of many types of plants.

"Low-Water-Use Plants" is a good book for someone interested in landscaping with drought-tolerant plants. Shuler provides excellent plant descriptions and details on garden uses. I would have gotten great use out of this book when I first became interested in low-water-use gardening after purchasing my first house in California. I have now become primarily interested in native plants, however, and Shuler's book only includes a few these. For budding native plant enthusiasts I would recommennd Marjore G. Schmidt's "Growing native California Plants" and Sally Wasowski's "Native Landscaping from El Paso to L.A."

As a professional landscape designer in Southern California, specializing in "low-water/low-maintenance" gardens, I loved this book. Good photos, clear descriptions, written by a knowledgeable person (Carol Shuler, Landscape Architect). This is a book for either the professional OR non-professional who want a fast reference book, with photos and descriptions. I use this to show my clients, makes it fast and easy so that they can see what I am talking about. Only complaint, I wish they had included more variety here, but then it would be a much larger book. Also includes great charts in back of book for reference of shrubs, trees, accent plants and ground covers. I highly recommend this book to those living in the Southwest, especially Southern California.