Customer Reviews

Vines and Climbers (For Your Garden)

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I bought this book because I live in a townhouse with a tiny backyard and due to the limited space, I garden with vines. First of all, let me say that this book has absolutely gorgeous pictures. Unfortunately, aside from that, there's not much usable information. There are a few paragraphs to explain each chapter, ("Designing with Vines", "Problem Solving Vines"), but no pertinent information, like zones, light requirements or weather the plants are available at the nursery or can only be grown from seed. As I stated before, the pictures are beautiful, but even the variety of pictures is limited as there are sometimes several pictures of the same kind of plant. I was disappointed in the limited number of vines that were portrayed -there wasn't a single vine or climber that I had never heard of or seen before. The book is a wonderful coffee table book, but like I said before, not much substance. If you want to learn more about vines, beyond what they look like, look for another book.

Beautiful pictures will inspire you and spark your imagination, but the omissions in the text may cause you to pick the wrong plant for your situation. Running Cedar only "presents a clean weedless look" if there is no competition at all from other plants and you happen to have the exact, unique conditions it requires to thrive. Hall's Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is not merely "as vigorous as a weed" it is a pest and is on every state detrimental invasive plant list I've seen. Morning glories are pretty and it's true "nothing grows faster", but he leaves out that nothing seeds in more and becomes a pest more quickly. Honeysuckle 'Dropmore Scarlet' is touted as "a rampant grower" that will "smother everything in its path", when actually it is very wellbehaved, especially compared to the others listed above. So, enjoy the pictures, get some ideas, and buy a really good and responsible reference book.

An extremely general guide of little subtsance but with lots of pretty pictures.

It is unlcear what the author of this book had in mind when he wrote this book. There are no cultural requirements given for any of the plants featured. Plant species are referred to in the most general of terms. For example, there are four references to "Jasmine" in the book; of the four, two are Trachelospermum, one is potato vine (solanum), and only one is a true jasmine, (Jasminum nudiflorum). Nowhere does the author attempt to correctly identify the plants in question, everything simply becomes "Jasmine".

To confuse matters even more, the author for some unknown reason decided to label any plant that sprawls outward a vine. Therefore in this book pachysandra, pulmonaria, lamium and club moss become "vines". Would you expect to find moss in a book on vines and climbers? I find this most bizarre not to mention somewhat confusing to the novice gardener.

If your goal is to learn something about vines and climbers this isn't the book for you. On the other hand if you just want a book with nice pictures and nothing more than by all means buy it- but don't pay full price!