A gardening book for gardening the way I like it, letting the plants do the work for you.  I appreciate this book and all of it's tips since I have a garden just like this.  Plantiful shows you a way to flower garden in a way that will "let self-sowers, also known as volunteers, work for you..." just plant and let grow!  

You can tell author Kristen Green is passionate about sharing her knowledge as she states "I would share every plant in my garden with you if I could.  Instead, I wrote this."  In her books she gives you a run down of basic plant biology that every gardener should know and then begins to share the advantages of self-sowers, plants that plant themselves.  

In Plantiful you will find three helpful lists of 150 self-sowing plants characterized by 'Faithful Volunteers,' 'Thrilling Fillers' and 'Come Back Keepers.' The list includes a picture of the plant, what zones they like to grow in, when they like to grow, what they look like, what they attract and care instructions.  Also included is the very important information on where these plants are considered invasive. However, any gardener should double check the plants that they buy to make sure that they are not invasive since some of the suggestions in the list can be misleading. 

The section on frost-tender plants that are mostly exotic and will need to be overwintered inside are not my cup of tea, but other gardeners might want to try it.

Helpful instructions on propagating (which will need to be done eventually in any garden) are also included along with handy pictorials.  

A great book for any gardener or someone looking into low maintenance gardening.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

Attracting Beneficial Bugs to your garden is an ecosystem based approach to managing pests in your garden.  Written by a professed past insecticide user turned bug-lover, this book is written with humor and a down-to-earth approach.  There is a lot of great information in here, especially about plant and bug communication that will hopefully convince people that they never have to use an insecticide again. As author Jessica Walliser says "It is about encouraging the beneficial ones in hopes of mitigating the pesky ones."

The book is organized into helpful sections:

Beneficial Bug Profiles: Includes how the bug works, what they prey on, what exactly they will do in your garden and what to plant in order to help them.

Gardening for Bugs: This section will help you understand the feeding habits of beneficial bugs in order to for you to provide the plants that they will thrive along with.  It even includes beneficial plants that would be considered weeds!

Plant Profiles: The exact species of plants that will help you attract the bugs you want.

Design: This is a handy section to help you design all of these plants in a residential setting.  

This book was provided for free in return for an honest review.

Tales of caution for dog owners, written by a veterinarian who has seen far too many human induced deadly mistakes that have taken or nearly taken the lives of dogs.  You may have heard advice such as don't give your dog fatty foods and chocolate or don't let two female dogs live together, but never really have known exactly why.  This book will explain it to you along with heart wrenching real-life examples just in case you didn't believe it could ever happen.

In each of the 39 chapters a danger to your dog is presented along with scientific explanations as to why this is bad for your dog and what you can do about it.  A broad range of topics is discussed including such as which dogs are more likely to get cancers and the debate of cosmetic procedures for dogs.  I did learn a lot from the section about cancer in dogs where "the best decision is always based on an accurate diagnosis." When to worry about lumps and bumps was another informative section for any dog owner. The section on what types of foods to feed your dog and obesity in dogs was well written.  

My one large criticism of this book (which was provided as an Advanced Reading Copy and hopefully edited out!) was that the veterinarian and author states that a Rottweiler is a "jaw-locking breed." Based on the anatomy of dogs, "There is no such thing as jaw-locking in any breed."  


This book was received for free in return for an honest review.