Wondering what’s the best time of year to sow your cilantro seeds or plant onion sets? The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide: Planting Calendar for Year-Round Organic Gardening by Seattle Tilth (and multiple authors over the years)defines a complete time-line for sowing a wide range of edibles and flowers. Also included are a number of excellent articles on organic gardening techniques, like summer cover crops and recipes for preventing powdery mildew. Buy online.
The gardener’s guide to growing hellebores
Once you’ve spent a pretty penny on a new hellebore you will want to protect your investment by learning exactly what they need to thrive. Read The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Hellebores by Graham Rice and Elizabeth Strangman for details on cultivation, propagation and essays on hellebore species and hybrids. Color pictures will whet your appetite for more of these delightful winter bloomers.
Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden: Drought-resistant planting through the year
Droughty summers are a mainstay of the Pacific Northwest and water shortages are only going to get worse. Here’s a hands-on solution by one of the world’s finest gardeners living in a part of England that shares our cool but dry summers. This book requires some work on the reader’s part as the plant names are in Latin, but the proven design examples and plant selections are well worth the effort. Excellent photographs hold the reader’s attention and clearly say dry is beautiful.