A brief review of Janice Crowl's book, Container Gardening in Hawai'i
Beware! This book can and will turn you on to the dark side of gardening.
For the few years I've been gardening, 100% of my focus has been on
growing plants for food. Plants grown for their looks had no
place in my yard, I considered utility to be the key, and utility was
edibility. If you can't eat it, then twist it from the earth,
cast it into the compost pile, and plant some beans in the space that
remains!
In fact, I only picked up the book to begin with because it was about
gardening in Hawai'i, and I knew Janice lived in Hilo, and is a pretty
smart gardener. Books about gardening in Hawai'i are not so
prevalent. Most gardening books cover the conditions found on the
mainland U.S., most of which isn't in zone 11. So when I find a
gardening book that has "Hawai'i" as part of the title, I buy it.
Once I picked up the book, I was pretty well engaged by it.
Admittedly, I like books on gardening, but Janice's book is
beautiful. The pictures alone gave me a lot of ideas of how I
could make things a little bit more attractive around the house.
The content and the pictures supported each other really well,
and the book has great balance. There's a lot of useful
information, and it's well worth the time and money.