Customer Reviews

Making More Plants: The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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After 5 years of raising a bazillion plants from seed and just finishing a 3 month course on plant propagation (and trying to figure out how to turn my kitchen into a clean room for the purpose of tissue culture without driving my husband to divorce court), I saw Ken Druse's book reviewed in 'Garden Design ' magazine and ordered it. Not only is this book exquisitely photographed to the point of tears, (I get very emotional about plants, except marigolds) it has excellent information and clear directions which put my propagation textbook to shame. If you raise more than ten plants from seed, you will eventually want thousands of plants and Ken is your man. The step by step instructions are clear and botanically correct. The photographs are achingly beautiful but more importantly, tell you what to do, why and how, yet without putting you to sleep like above-mentioned textbook. In fact, you may need two copies, one to fill in as the proverbial coffee table amusement and another to take to your greenhouse or shed or wherever you commit these delightful little acts of plant reproduction. Oh, and maybe one for the bedroom on slow nights. And maybe the bathroom. One for the car for long trips. This book is that good.

Simply the best book written on plant propagation.

Book contains 22 pages on botany, 10 pages on how to hybridize, 14 pages on seed collecting, 14 pages on seed conditioning, 24 pages on sowing, 14 pages on vegetative reproduction, 44 pages on cuttings, 12 pages on layering, 12 pages on grafting, 16 pages on division, 24 pages on bulbs and roots, 3 pages on tissue culture, 16 pages of plant specific notes, 4 page cross-name reference, 4 pages of plant suppliers, 4 page glossary, and 5 page index.

Each section contains dozens of photographs displaying the "how to" approach described in the text. Excellent information and easy to follow instructions. Every page contains a tip or trick about plant propagation.

My favorite section is the 16 pages of plant specific propagation notes and comments. Hundreds of plants are listed. It's like reading Mother Nature's secret diary! Everything you every wanted to know about how to make more plants (but growers never would tell you) is contained in this section. All alone, these propagation notes are worth the price of the book.

If you want to get your hands dirty, this is a great "how to" guide for plant propagation. You'll recover the cost of this book over your next garden season.

Excellent information!

This book was given to me for Christmas by my husband. I had not seen it before and I was completely staggered by the combination of very full information about propagation with the incredible photographs and the overall passion for every growing thing that is expressed here. It is unusual to find a "how to book" that contains the visual perfection found in this volume. No plant lover-gardener should be without it.

The title of this book says it all and the book, as unbelievable as it may be, delivers it all. Whether you want to learn about propagation by seed, cutting, layering, grafting, division, leaves, roots or how to propagate geophytes, the clear, detailed instructions and step-by-step photos will get you working in no time. Ken Druse, gardener and photographer extraordinaire, has packed this book with photos and has not started in on the details without providing plenty of preparation tips including information on seed collecting and storing and a quick botany lesson. And Druse doesn't leave you guessing about how to propagate the plants you want - an extensive appendix fills you in on the best methods for specific plants by listing them alphabetically. Making More Plants is incredibly useful as both a quick reference and as a gardening textbook for learning more complex techniques.

Ken Druse has "done it again" -- a beautiful, useful book that any gardener (amature or master) will want to own. When mine arrived from Amazon, I put down everything and started reading. Everything the other reviewers said is accurate, and so I won't repeat that here.

However, there is one thing that no one has mentioned: the type is tiny! Even with my reading glasses -- which I hardly ever have to wear -- I still end up squinting. I think that the stylist for the book made a decision that while elegant is hardly in the best interest of the reader. Given that Mr. Druse is a magazine editor, it is not surprising that the pages are in multiple column layout, but it is suprising with the small type how dense it all seems.

This is an excellent reference guide and the copious appendixes are probably the best I have seen in any reference material.

First things first, this is a beautiful and inspiring book. It is definately worthwhile to have in your gardening library. If you need some motivation to get out and garden, here's your book.

After my initial pouring over this book, it's remained on my shelf in the library and not on the greenhouse bench.

If you are looking for a reference book with detailed instructions and illustrated examples on how to propagate, Alan Toogood's "AHS Propagating Plants" is the better buy.

Here is a revised version of the review I wrote for the New Jersey Herald newspaper:

"This book is a beautiful, clear guide to the art of gardening and plantsmanship. Making More Plants brings back into focus the truth that gardening is not about hollow, "twenty minute per week" instant gratification, but rather an enriching, year-round, life-long process.

In his first books, The Natural Garden, The Natural Shade Garden and The Collector's Garden, Ken Druse seduced us into using those plants that belong and fit easily into our particular environment, to use native species and their hybrids or only those foreign introductions that will not invade our eco system. Now, in Making More Plants, Mr. Druse invites us to travel deeper into the heart and soul of gardening.

He explains in his introduction that his goal is to help "gardeners to know how it feels to sow a seed or root a cutting and watch the results grow to maturity, to experience the freedom and convenience of being able to produce plants in numbers." With his beautiful photographs and friendly writing style he illuminates the exquisite, sometimes hidden world of plant reproduction. He provides just enough science to satisfy curiosity and empower the passionate gardener to grow new plants from seed, stem cuttings, root cuttings and grafts. We learn how to have more of our favorite dahlias and lilies, how to bring rare trees and shrubs that aren't even on the market into our home gardens.

With an appendix of over 700 genera and thousands of species, Making More Plants is an enjoyable read and empowering tool for the gardener who wants to understand more about the life of plants, and experience the thrill of "growing his or her own"."

While I'm a relative newby to the propagation world, I strongly recommend this book on several merits. Ken Druse communicates eloquently the science of plant propagation, and yet his photography strongly appeals to one's artistic sense. Most books on propagation or starting seed are dry, blandly illustrated, and really don't do much to foster the art of the science. Ken has done it all. You simply cannot help but daydream while paging through the book.

A treasured addition to your botanical book collection, Ken Druse will share space with greats like Rosemary Verey, Penelope Hobhouse, and Mary Keen.

Having previously failed at stem cuttings, I was delighted to have my first babies grow after following Druse's instructions. The pictures are very helpful and he gives enough detail that one does the right things the first time. Nothing succeeds every time, but this book is a gem.

`Making More Plants' by leading horticultural journalist Ken Druse is a glossy and inviting introduction to virtually all different kinds of plant propagation available to the home gardener. It is both more extensive and less intensive than the excellent `The New Seed Starters Handbook' by Nancy Bubel, which is a humble trade paperback which; however, covers starting plants from seed in much more detail than Maestro Druse's oversized volume.

While Bubel has more information on seeds for less money, this should not turn you away from Druse' book for the very simple reason that starting new plants from seed is only one of several different ways of increasing your store of a great variety of plants. And, for many plants, `asexual' propagation is far more successful than planting seeds.

One aspect of Druse' book one should not underestimate is reflected in his subtitle, `The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation'. This means this book is at least as much a pep talk and sermon about the pleasures of propagation as it is about understanding and technique. One thing I especially appreciate about the book is the fact that Druse does all of his own photography. I may be imagining this, but I sense a better than average effectiveness in the way the photographs capture the author's points. This alone is not sufficient to buy the book, but it all adds up to making this `pretty' book well worth the money.

What really surprises me is the number of different propagation techniques the author covers. The list is:

Hunting and Gathering. Wait, this isn't a `propagation' technique per se, but it is a method by which one can increase the variety of plants in your garden. So, like cooking with wild game and wild mushrooms, this is all part of the big picture of plant collecting.
Conditioning. A preparation for and understanding of the various aspects of seed planting. This is one of those `science' chapters.
Sowing. The main event for growing plants from seed.
Vegetative Reproduction. The general term for `asexual' (not from seeds) propagation.
Cuttings. The most common method for starting a new plant from a piece of an established plant. The paradigm of this method is the parable of the old man sticking a green branch into the ground at random and having it `miraculously' develop into a tree.
Leaves. Similar to cuttings, but only available for a smaller number of plants, primarily evergreens, succulents, and tropical plants.
Layering. This is the way nature does asexual reproduction with a lot of plants. The most easily visualized example, at least for us older folks, is the spider plant, which develops complete little plants at the ends of its spider-leg like vines.
Grafting. This is not so much propagation as a method for improving a plant or combining two to get the better of two worlds. The most famous grafting use was the grafting of European wine grape varieties onto hearty American rootstock, when a disease wiped out the European grape plants.
Division. Another example of man imitating nature. Probably the most common method used by occasional amateur gardeners.
Geophytes. I find it amazing that the author includes this chapter, as I would have thought it difficult to the point of impossibility to artificially propagate ferns from the tiny spores that preceded seeds in the evolutionary development of sexual propagation techniques.
Roots. Very similar to layering and division, and most commonly used method for certain types of grasses.

For a `pretty' book, this volume has remarkably good appendices. By far the best is the long list of `Resources' with addresses, telephone numbers, and sketches for dozens of plant sources in the United States, Canada, and the UK. Unfortunately, there are few web sites, but any web jockey worth their salt should be able to track down these companies with their favorite search engine.

This is an excellent first book for the amateur, and an excellent source of daydreams while reading in January and February as you sit among your piles of seed catalogues which are probably flooding your mailbox right about now.