Customer Reviews

Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts, and Other Miniatures

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Impressively illustrated with glorious full color photographs of the many & various moods of moss gardening from a tilled sand Zen meditation complete with mossy stones to wild, serene woodlands carpeted with lush colonies glowing in slanting sunshine, this is one Edenesque read. If you know of anyone with moss on their minds, this is a unique love story of one fellow who bent down to earth to study these little green plants. As magnificent as the subject itself. Very well done!

I recommend this book to begineers, it is nicely written and easy to understand. Will definitely encourage you into moss growing.

I would have appreciated a mean of identifying the types of moss that already grow in my garden, maybe some magnified pictures ? There are in this book but maybe not close enough. Although there are 15000 types of moss, maybe it is too tricky.

Good book anyway

This is a beautiful book, and I treasure it. I've shared it with several others who value the green mosses and lichens of the outdoors and they were also impressed. It is high quality paper, every picture (abundant) is in color. The descriptions are thorough. It is a treasured book of mine, one of my favorites for information and for pleasure. The joy of moss and worts.

The other reviews, both positive and negative, seem to be on the mark. I think the words, "The Joy of" should have preceded the title. I was personally looking for a little more of the "How to" in this book about gardening. '...not much about lichens. It was both funny and long winded at times. It was beautiful but not as informative as I would have liked. This makes a great, compact sized, coffee table book but not a very good HYI text book.

This is an excellent text for the "beginner to mid" moss apprentice. The photos are brilliantly gorgeous and add much excitement to the text. Schenk is clearly an enormous fan of moss as his pen scrolls simple, yet technical, information about moss throughout the text. The only qualm I have with this book is that Schenk keeps to the 2 major genus of moss. However, the photos, which might give the moss-lover ideas for a moss garden, pull the book into a text that is a must for the moss-"er."

I have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder with moss. I collect it, use it to build moss sculptures, grow many different genus of it. 2 years ago, I fell in love with moss and the obsession hasn't stopped.

Lush photographes of excellent quality. Mr.Schenk writes with flair and wit and as though he is speaking directly to you, the reader. I can't get enough of this book. I want to memorize all of it's info. So much in such a tiny book and with such personality. {no dry science book of the 50's, 60's and 70's.}He gives you exactly what he said he would in his preface. Great read and lovely to look at.

"Moss Gardening" is inspirational reading. The author's Zen-like appreciation of these tiny plants is infectious. A chapter that is sort of a field guide would have been helpfull, although it may have not fit with the author's intention. This book's purpose is to arrouse passion and it does that job well.

I found this book well organize, but really not for the beginner looking for basic data on moss gardening. Detailed illustrations would have added to the text. Handsome photography, but greater magnification necessary to type mosses.

This book might also have been titled "Moss Love." Schenk brings extraordinary depth and breadth to the subject of moss, but above all the reader is left with a sense of his love for this primitive plant form. This is not a simple "how-to" book with charts and lists of ten-step programs to moss-growing success. Rather, it is a natural and cultural history of moss and its cousins, the lichens, liverworts, and selaginellas that is enriched by a grower's experience and instructions. A thoughtful, intelligent work that caused me to read slowly and thoughtfully.

This is a wonderfully informative book. It is the kind of book that has material both for the person who knows nothing about moss gardening and the person who is a veteran moss enthusiast. If we were more into moss and less into lawns the environment would be more healthy. We wouldn't have to pump polluting weed killers and fertilizers into our precious ground water. There is nothing more beautiful than an area of velvety moss and this book tells you how to achieve it. I'll take moss over a lawn any day. If one is not ambitious to convert and entire lawn to moss, a little shady spot will do!