Customer Reviews

Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife

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

 

 

A wildscape teaches you and your family about the symbiosis of life. It's like creating a miniature world in your own yard, and it's amazing how much wildlife you can attract and enjoy. This book is full of color pictures, two of which are of my own wildscape. It describes how to provide the three basic requirements of food, cover and water. It has 239 pages of tables that tell about various wildlife species including birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and the key ingredient, wildflowers and native plants. The book describes ten ecological regions in Texas, and the tables indicate the kinds of wildlife you can expect in each region. Creating a wildscape is much easier than it appears. By using native plants, you avoid many of the problems and work of traditional gardening. I enjoy my own wildscape immensely, and I highly recommend this book and creating a one of your own.

This is one of three or four books that I bought to use to build up my Texas gardening knowledge and help me creat a wildscape in my garden. The book is loaded with great information, and would be very useful in helping me learn and plan, except for one small detail. THERE IS NO INDEX! Nothing. Every other plant and bird book I have has an index, this is a very basic thing to include in this type of book. There is a fantastic ~175 page table on native Texas plants. Is there an index to it? No. Are they arranged in some type of alphabetic order? No. They are arranged somewhat by type, ie. tree-shrub-flower, but nowhere does it even say how it is organized. If you want information on Blue Mistflower, Eupatorium coelestinum, you have to go through this huge table page by page looking for it. You have to do this every time you want information on any plant. Do you think you missed the plant you were looking for? You have to go back through it again more carefully. It may not even be there, but you don't know until you search through it. The lack of an index makes this great book, with loads of useful information, virtually useless as a reference. I have other books that I use as plant references, unfortunately they don't have some of the info contained in this book. I still use this book, but it would be SO much better with an index in it, and with an index it would probably be my primary reference and I would give it 5 stars.

From the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department:

"Those who have purchased the book can obtain a searchable index for the tables by sending an e-mail to nature@tpwd.state.tx.us. If you do not have access to e-mail send a note to:

Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
Wildlife Diversity Program
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744

The chapters are well written,although most could have been a little more comprehensive. I was doing fine until I got to the Appendix. It's easy to get lost here. The tables themselves are comprehensive, but not easy to navigate if you don't know your family names, or if you don't know the name of the item (i.e.plant/bird etc.) you're looking for. No index at all. At least it does have a glossary but for the life of me, why do all the authors assume that everyone knows how to pronounce some of the not so ordinary.

This book starts out telling you how to create a "Wildscape" in Texas. It proceeds to divide the state into 10 "ecoregions" (with and extremely detailed map by county...necessary in Texas!) There is a chapter on Basics of Wildlife Habitat and one on Designing your Wildscape. Then it gets to the good stuff...

Part two is divided into categories of wildlife: birds; hummingbirds specifically; mammals, reptiles and amphibians; and insects and spiders. They cover common to Texas members of each group.

Part three is "troubleshooting". Unwanted pests, gardening troublespots and warnings about invasive exotics are included here.

Part four is more than half of the book and it's the appendix. There are detailed charts on all bird, hummingbird, mammal, reptile & amphibian, and native plants available in Texas, including description, habitat, region, etc.

The strength of this book is the huge amount of information provided. If you are looking to attract a certain type of bird, there's a chart to tell you dimensions for a nest box for it and it's habitat and mounting instructions. Hummingbirds? A chart for favored plants, detailing regions plant can be found in. Butterflies? A chart for common species and their larval and nectar source plants.

The weaknesses are indexing and photographs. There is no index, so be prepared to search through charts for specific information. There are few photographs, mainly concentrating on wildlife and plants to avoid. Nevertheless, with a good plant guide or knowledge of local plants, this book really hits the spot if you are trying to attract wildlife!

As various people have said, this is a great book but is handicapped by the lack of an index. I made an index, and it's on my Website (http://richter.haus.org/Wildscapes) in either Excel or PDF format, if you'd like to download it.

There are 2 Excel spreadsheets: one is an index to plant families, and all the information fits on one printed page. The second is an index to individual plant species, and takes up about 8 printed pages. Each spreadsheet has 2 or 3 worksheets containing the same information sorted in different ways (for example, by common name on one worksheet, and by scientific name on another worksheet).

If you don't have Excel, or would rather not deal with it, there are also PDF files that you can print out. There is one PDF for each worksheet; that is, for each different sort order of the index.

Enjoy! This really is a fantastic book. - Susan

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has made this out-of-print book into a DVD that they will send to you free. Do a search and you should be able to find a Web page with this text: "The book Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife, has been made into an interactive DVD. To get your free copy..."

This books lists Texas wildlife. If you don't know the order and family in which your plant or animal is taxonomically placed, you will not find your it in this book. There is no index at all so, except for an accomplished scientist who already knows all the scientific names, this book is absolutley no help.

I am creating a haven in my yard with this book and I can't wait to watch all the wildlife flock to my own little garden of Eden!

This book is a wealth of information for not only trees, shrubs and plants, but also for birds, butterflies and wildlife. It is a great book to have on hand for reference as well.