Volume 2, Issue 5

Miller Library top twenty most-borrowed items since January 2014

What do our patrons borrow from the Miller Library? We've been collecting statistics since the fall of 2012, and the results get clearer each year, helping us to select the most useful new items for addition to the library. Looking at data since January 2014, more than half of our most popular items are the work of local or regional authors. Our library users study native plants and wildlife. Books for children are also well-used, as are curriculum materials. Here are the top 20, in order of popularity:

1. Encyclopedia of Northwest native plants for gardens and landscapes 
2. Plants of the Pacific Northwest coast
3. Planting the dry shade garden
4. The princess and the peas
5. Growing vegetables west of the Cascades
6. Conifers for gardens
7. The flora of Seattle in 1850
8. The beetle book
9. Beauty by design
10. Birds of Seattle and Puget Sound
11. Fill of joy: more tales from the Montlake Fill
12. Winter gardening in the maritime Northwest
13. The book of gardening projects for kids
14. Nature by design
15. Landscaping for wildlife in the Pacific Northwest
16. Designing with conifers
17. Second nature: tales from the Montlake Fill
18. Native plants in the coastal garden
19. How to grow a school garden
20. Tree anatomy below ground (DVD)

Learn what researchers at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens are doing to advance Restoration Ecology and Environmental Horticulture at our annual Review of Student Work. Students have prepared posters explaining their work on the effects of climate on plant communities, ecological restoration, invasive plant control, and much more. Don't miss the opening night party Friday, May 8, from 5 to 7 pm.

The Plant Lover's Guide to Epimediums
reviewed by Brian Thompson

Kew Gardens has begun a very helpful series of books for gardeners known as The Plant Lover’s Guides. One of the best, partly because of the scarcity of other books on this topic, is The Plant Lover’s Guide to Epimediums by Sally Gregson. The availability of both species and hybrid epimediums has exploded in recent years, and this guide will introduce you to the new Chinese epimediums – “these are the divas” – as well as all the old favorites for dry shade. I’m especially impressed with the photographs as I know from experience the delicate flowers of this genus are very difficult to capture.

New to the Library April 2015