Taming Wildflowers: Bringing the Beauty and Splendor of Nature's Blooms into Your Own Backyard

by Miriam Goldberger

The Garden Writers Association has recognized Taming Wildflowers with a Silver Award of Achievement Wildflowers are the jewels of spring and summer everywhere. Families drive miles to witness their beauty in wild landscapes. Now, gardeners are discovering that they can easily and successfully cultivate these hardy native wonders right at home, for year-after-year enjoyment. Wildflower farmer and floral designer Miriam Goldberger believes that wildflowers belong as an essential part of North American gardens. Taming Wildflowers is the ultimate DIY book on wildflower part wildflower history (“How Wildflowers Changed the World”), part upbeat, informative how-to, and a little basic plant science, and an easy primer on designing with these wild and wondrous blooms. Her richly photographed book shows gardeners how wildflowers enhance the beauty and environmental health of their gardens by attracting birds, butterflies and other important pollinators; the simple steps in seed propagation (“Making Babies”); cutting garden must-haves (natives and non-natives); integrating wildflowers into the vegetable garden; harvesting fresh and everlasting wildflowers; drying; using floral design secrets to create long-lasting arrangements; and how to design a wildflower wedding. Features more than 60 of Miriam’s favorite wildflowers and 300 full-color photos.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2014

Reviews

[Chris Eirschele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taming Wildflowers by Miriam Goldberger is an excellent resource for growing your own garden of native plants. It has a lot of basic, as well as detail, specifics to growing a wildflower garden.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taming Wildflowers suffered from an infestation of exclamation points and intensifiers. She loves her subject! Every flower is her favorite! And she knows you love them too, because you picked up this book!

I think Goldberger needed to clarify her purpose. Either she should have made it about beautiful uses for wildflowers and dramatically cut the how-to-grow part, or else she should have made the gardening part take the spotlight and bulked it up into something actually useful and saved her bouquet advice and wedding albums for another book. As it was she didn’t really do either very well.

It really was an okay book. The photos were lovely. I felt like it was too detailed for an overview but not detailed enough to be a really useful resource. She put so much work into describing what pollinators everything attracts, but an index chart would be more effective, if that’s a gardener’s concern. I think if you’re into native wildflowers, you should put more thought into what flowers are native to what region.

It could have used a little reorganizing—some of the sections were so short, it was hardly worth separating them out—and as long as she was discussing individual flowers, I wished she would have added more about them. What are the differences between this and its two cousins she features? If they’re ALL your favorite, how do I pick? Aren’t these prairie and desert wildflowers? She featured a type of quinine that grows in Canada. Is this the same quinine they use for malaria?

I have questions.

[Bethany B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great. I’ve already started adding wildflowers to our 15 acres in the mountains. I’m determined to figure out how to get them flourishing on this new property. It may take me a couple years to learn but I’m determined to figure it out. This book was a great help. I learned a lot to apply now and again this fall and winter for the next season. I’m excited. I do wish there was a little bit more info laid out step by step in a clear way for each of her favorite flowers. It was a good general guideline but I was hoping for more details. Still I enjoyed this book and the photos and will reference it in the days to come.

[Tiffanie22 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am drawn to any books I can get my hands on to make my garden vision a reality, and this one will certainly help! Miriam Goldberger and her partner own The Wildflower Farm in Coldwater, Ontario. Her passion for wildflowers (both native, and some non-native) is evident throughout! There are beautiful, inspiring photos throughout the book, but sadly, not all tell you what you are looking at, which I missed. This book is a primer of sorts - how to grow from seeds, 60 wonderful wildflowers with descriptions (very much appreciated!), and how to cut and make bouquets and arrangements. This is a book I will refer to time and again! I give this book a 4.5 out of 5.

[K LF]

Loved 29 - 109 (great descriptions, ecology (connection between flora and fauna) and helpful pictures of seedlings)

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb resource book to add to your gardening library.