The Pitiful Gardener's Handbook

Successful Gardening in Spite of Yourself
by Connie Eden and Tracy Cheney

This is a gardening book for beginners. The Pitiful Gardener's Handbook is designed to give you confidence in gardening (and no longer feel like a pitiful "brown thumb"). It provides basic information on choosing plants, how to transplant, prune, compost, fertilize, etc. Emphasis is on how to make gardening easier by knowing what kind of plants will thrive in your gardening site (so they don't die easily), understanding what kind of gardener you are (you can choose plants that match the type of gardening chores you won't avoid or forget to do) and working with Mother Nature (instead of against her). Most of the stuff here I already knew from growing up helping in my mom's garden. Some info was new to me, and I particularly appreciated the brief explanation of descriptive words in some plants' scientific names- so when reading them you automatically know important things about those plants- like they do well in sun, or have a certain color of flower, or creep all over the ground. There's nothing really spectacular about this book, but it is quite useful for novice gardeners and a very quick, easy read.

Rating: 3/5                     175 pages, 1999