Chesapeake Gardening and Landscaping: The Essential Green Guide

by Barbara W. Ellis

What if, one step at a time, we could make our gardens and landscapes more eco-friendly? Barbara W. Ellis's colorful, comprehensive guide shows homeowners, gardeners, garden designers, and landscapers how to do just that for the large and beautiful Chesapeake Bay watershed region. This area includes Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and part of West Virginia (translating to portions of USDA Zones 6, 7, and 8). Here, mid-Atlantic gardeners, from beginners to advanced, will find the essential tools for taking steps to make their gardens part of the solution through long-term planning and planting.

The guide is built from the ground up around six simple but powerful principles that anyone can

* Reduce lawn
* Build plant diversity
* Grow native plants
* Manage water runoff
* Welcome wildlife
* Garden wisely

Included are detailed instructions for assessing and designing your particular garden or landscape site; choosing and caring for trees, shrubs, vines, ground covers, and flowers; and succeeding with such conditions as shade or poor soil. From rain gardens to woodland gardens, meadow gardens to wildlife gardens, and much more, this indispensable guide features more than 300 color photographs.

Genres: Gardening, Nature, Nonfiction

328 pages, Hardcover

First published March 10, 2015

Reviews

[Henry Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was basically written for me -- a novice trying to convert his Chesapeake area lawn into an environmentally-friendly native garden. The photos in particular are extremely helpful.

I did feel like the text was a little basic, though. If you are already on board with the "plant natives/lawn stinks/bugs are good" train, you probably know a lot of what's covered here. I was familiar with pretty much all the recommended plants, for instance.

Still if you haven't obsessively been reading over native plant lists this book makes for an excellent one-stop-shopping experience, which can save you the hassle of flipping between a million websites. Plus there are the beautiful inspiring pictures.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second half of the book was where Ellis put the good stuff. I’m glad I kept reading and made it that far. I appreciate the plant lists and recommendations for plants that grow in my area. Ellis sorted them out: shrubs, trees and vines; ground covers; flowers; shade plants; rain garden plants. This book had good pictures, the ones that were there, but I was frustrated by how many recommended plants were not shown. I made a long list of interesting plants I might want.

I loathed the first two chapters, which addressed ecological matters. She commits the error that many people of faith do, where she bosses you around and tells you What You Have To Do in a way that makes you want to run and do the opposite. I am not *actually* going to plant invasive species just to spite her… probably. It’s tempting. She would do better to step back and think about how her words sound to the person reading them.

Chapter 3 was just basic how-to-garden advice you can get anywhere.

[TheAccidental Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago.........very inspiring as I recall. I am off on an adventure to bring much more naturality to my backyard. Have recently read Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home (highly recommended) and am also working through Noah's Garden (Sara Stein) and Wilding: Returning Nature to Our FarmWilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm

Meanwhile I am listening to The Overstory, which I was supposed to read for bookclub over a year ago. Reading all these sources at the same time turns out to be a fascinating way to build a big knowledge web!