Customer Reviews

Western Garden Book: More than 8,000 Plants - The Right Plants for Your Climate - Tips from Western Garden Experts (Sunset Western Garden Book)

5 star:		(86)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a "best buy" for any western gardener. However if you have the previous edition, the changes are so minor (different photos, rewrites that are paraphases, little new material) that your money is better spent on another book. If you own an older copy without color illustrations, pass it on to a new gardener and treat yourself to the 8th edition!

I've found that this latest edition is more difficult to use than earlier editions. The index is much shorter than earlier editions & the common names of many of the plants are not listed. Once you get used to the format in this edition it's still very useful. The photos & descriptions are always beautiful & very helpful. Plant diseases & pests are also organized in a different manner, but not in a good way--same problems as the index of plant names.

If you have an old 2001 edition of this book do not give it up for a new one. For most gardeners the 2007 edition has a fatal flaw. Perhaps there is some other reason but I can only chalk up to horticultural elitism. Sunset decided it would be good to completely drop the plant index cross referencing common to botanical names. While this may have saved a few pages of print, it is a great injustice to an otherwise excellent reference book. Want to look up columbine, sunflower, foxglove? Forget it.

I have been gardening for 30 years and have numerous friends who visit my garden to enjoy its richness. Knowing the taxonomical nomenclature of my native columbine does not contribute to successful cultivation nor to its beauty. It will however allow you to look the plant up in the new, unimproved Western Garden book issue.

What were the Sunset editors thinking.....that they were going to force we gardeners into botanical literacy? No thanks, at 60, I would rather be gardening. If you still have a 2001 edition, keep the old beautiful dog eared copy. Do not waste your money on the 2007 edition which

A very good edition, & I always look forward to Sunset's new edition, although I have noticed that even though they add quite a few new plants every edition, they also delete entrys. This new edition has far fewer Eucalyptus species listed, is the first thing I have observed. As a collector & grower of unusual & exotic plants, it seems necessary to collect all the editions they have printed. I also have one other precaution; the gardening zones are NOT the same as the USDA plant hardiness zones. People who fail to read the first section of the book, & just start looking up plants, could make some grave errors. I also personally feel that their zone system is probably the best there is for California, but leaves something to be desired for some other zones. There are many plants I grow which they do not list as able to grow in my zone of New Mexico. It would appear that the southern Rio Grande river is as cold in winter as Albuquerque, going strictly by their zones. If not for these little annoyances, I'd give the book 5 stars, & for those of you living in California, it is definitely THE book to have if you are anywhere near serious about growing plants for beauty, pleasure, or business.

The information contained in the plant encyclopedia is more complete, and the color representations an improvement over the last edition, but the index for the volume is very meager, omitting individual plants' names. Why?

I've read both the new and old (2001) versions of this book. The 2001 version has a much better index with common plant names. The new version doesn't have this index, so unless you know the Latin name, it's tough to find something. I'd recommend buying the 2001 version. You'll save money too.

One of the things that was most useful in the older editions of this book was the index of common names of plants which is missing in the new edition. Unless you know the Latin name of the plant you want to look up, there's no way to find it in the book.

The old version of this book had 16 pages of index. This version of the book has only 3 pages of index.

Not happy.

Fred

I know many people love this book, but here are the reasons why it didn't live up to the hype of being a plant "bible" for me. I was looking for details (specific to my zone), pretty photos (to help me ID plants), and overall ease of use (easy-to-read font with good layout & organization).

1) It's hard to read. For most of the plants listed, the header is accompanied by a single tiny (~1inch size) representative pastel-colored illustration followed by 1-10 short paragraphs of generic text.

2) To find something, you have to thumb through pages of tiny print with nothing to grab your attention. It reads like a dictionary to me, when I wanted more of an encyclopedia. It's boring, having neither anecdotes (if you like those), interesting pictures, nor the utility of bullets.

3) Like a dictionary, the blurbs are short and generic. For all the bountiful garden greens available in California & along the west coast, there is a 7 paragraph generic description of "lettuce". The strains are mentioned in passing as filler --- not to describe their look or taste (which is ok since seed catalogs do a very good job), but neither were they suggested for certain parts of the west coast. They were simply listed to be listed, which bugged me. Obviously, I didn't read everything in the entire book, but I did read through the popular garden vegetables and that was my impression from all those entries.

4) I felt that this book passes the buck. For example: (a small blurb on tomato problems) "If certain diseases or nematodes cause trouble locally, you may be able to grow varieties that resist one or more problems. Keys to resistance you may see on plant labels or in catalog descriptions." I already know I can ask the local nursery and look at the plant labels there. The point of a home reference is to save me time & free me from dependence on others & to be there whenever the nurseries are closed. I want my home gardening reference to answer my questions so I could stay at home & continue gardening.

5)The margins are about 1/2 inch. This wouldn't normally be a critique, but bc the blurbs are general, I wanted room to jot down notes I found from more thorough resources (ex: AHS Encyclopedia of Gardening).

6) I didn't know the scientific names of strains I saw at the store & wanted to learn more about, and the one section with color photos (a short seg in the beginning) is alphabetized by scientific name.

7) I was really impressed by how blah I felt about this book bc it's obviously loved by many, so I checked the library for older editions to see how this book had improved over time. Unfortunately, the library only had the 7th ed and it seemed the same as the 8th, minus different cover art. Again, I read through only the sections pertinent to vegetables I wanted to grow.

I thought the following books were better as general gardening references bc they were more thorough, made for more interesting reads (bountiful containers has no photos), or had gorgeous color photos that were inspiring and helpful for ID purposes.

American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening

The Vegetable Gardener's Bible: Discover Ed's High-Yield W-O-R-D System for All North American Gardening Regions

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers

The Random House Book of Vegetables (Random House Garden)

In terms of Western coast gardening, there are books that are specific to regions of the coast that are more detailed.

My only beef with this fine book is the lack of a cross reference to the most common non-botanical name.