Book Description
Few things are more beautiful than a bouquet of flowers, and growing and cutting your own adds immeasureably to the pleasure a bouquet brings. In this book, illustrated with 50 inspiring color photographs, the gardener's cut-flower season extends from late winter, with shrubs and trees to force indoors, through the spring and summer flowers -- bulbs, annuals, perennials -- the "everlastings" you can grow for winter's dried flower bouquets. Especially valuable are the sections on when and how to cut flowers, how to condition them, and suggestions on combining different flowers into carefree arrangements. The basic mechanics of flower arranging and photos of home-grown bouquets will encourage novice gardeners.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful book.......2007-09-27
This is a wonderful book. Beautiful photographs and lots of helpful suggestions for planning and making a cutting garden, and for arranging flowers. Also a large section describing plants suitable for a cutting garden. Well worth the money.
Book Description
NOTE: New paperback edition includes COLOR photos.
In 'An American Cutting Garden' Suzanne McIntire describes how to plan a cutting garden, choose suitable plants, keep the garden in good order, and harvest a bountiful crop--all with charm and humor. Using both common and botanical names, she discusses in depth a wide variety of herbaceous perennials, biennials, annuals, and bulbs. McIntire includes information on topics such as the length of stems one might expect from the cutting garden, how many plants are needed of any one kind, when and how to sow seed outdoors, the heat-hardiness of plants, and strategies for coping with the effects of hot summers and cold winters. This new paperback edition includes color photos.
Customer Reviews:
Cutting Gardens by Your Best Friend Who You Never Met.......2006-02-12
So many garden books so little time! Yet take time for McIntire's hands on common sense. McIntire has spent 14 years experimenting and learning. It's as if your friend had decided to help you get started. And she can write. No matter where you are gardening, McIntire's got tips to get you started and to increase your expertise if you have already begun. If you are a real novice get a copy of the American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (ISBN 8789419432) which has all the pictures of all the plants. But, if you want to learn what to plant under what conditions and how to succeed no matter how small, how shaded, how unfavorable your conditions might be, McIntire will, with writing which approaches the garden writing greats in style, lead you in the right direction. Skill is not the secret. But McIntire will provide you with the skills she has developed and the love for the process of gardening that nurtures every gardener, new or old. Best of all she will not send you out to buy 18 irises at $18.00 each. You can start with packets of seed. She follows in the footsteps of Henry Mitchel and Elenor Perenyi. Yet she provides simple access. Any latin or common name can be found in her Index of Plants. If you wonder how to coordinate various plants so that you have things in bloom over the season, there is a Sequence of Bloom for all the plants mentioned. Now the paperback has 28 color pictures (buy the A to Z). Gardening is much more than the photos in books and catalogues. We don't have Vita Sackville West's gardeners. We don't live at White Flower Farm. We have a small plot of mediocre soil and hope. Suzanne McIntire will provide you with both the knowledge and the intangible sprit to produce a cutting garden with flowers you will love and cherish. Try it. Try it. You will see!
Good for First Timers.......2005-12-11
Sensibly organized, this book was a terrific guide for a new grower like me. Though I've long been a gardening fan, I've rarely grown flowers for cutting and never with a plan. This helped make it managable and fun.
The new paperback has color pictures!.......2005-02-11
The new paperback has 28 new color photos with loads of different flowers in them, all identified in the captions and mentioned in the text!
Wealth of wonderful information, but . . ........2004-08-04
NO pictures! Not for a novice, like me, who needs pictures to see what the actual plant / flowers look like in a garden. I wish that had been made clear before I purchased the book.
An American Cutting Garden.......2002-09-23
Finally a book that helps me navigate through the garden with a bit of information that is useful.I had great success using this text as a tool to prepare my beds for spring and summer. My garden looked beautiful. I experimented with new plants well.
Book Description
Grow marvelous flowers for bouquets in your Florida home landscape. Treat yourself or a friend to this new edition (the third) of "A Cutting Garden for Florida." It tells how to grow the best cut flowers for Florida, and how to harvest, condition, and arrange them, fresh or dry. The month-by-month calendar for the distinctive northern, central, and southern regions of Florida is a valuable feature. The book has in-depth information on many annuals, biennials, bulbs, shrubs, and trees, including plant-by-plant growing and conditioning details. The index, illustrations, bibliography, resource list, website list, and public garden directory add to its thorough treatment of growing flowers and filler for delightful bouquets.
Customer Reviews:
Good Florida Gardening Resource.......2007-01-20
Very good resource for learning about fall/winter gardening in Florida. There is a lot of information in it on how to cut & preserve the different flowers for arrangements. And it lists and describes which flowering plants will survive in Florida (so many won't), using the authors' firsthand experience. This book was very helpful in that way. Too bad I found out my soil is too alkaline. Hopefully, it can be improved.
essential for anyone trying to grow a floriferous garden in Central Florida's challenging climate... .......2005-10-01
A practical, precise, and unique book, essential for anyone trying to grow a floriferous garden in Central Florida's challenging climate... If you're not interested in cut flowers per se, don't be put off -- the book is an excellent reference for growing any flowers in Central Florida.
Though the title says it's for Florida, in fact the authors are pretty upfront with their geographical focus: North Florida can use any gardening book published for the Deep South, so this book concentrates on gardening in Central and, to a lesser degree, South Florida.
A Cutting Garden is not the work of horticultural experts in the narrow sense, since neither of the authors is a professional landscaper or botanist. That's by no means a criticism: Sometimes you need the wise words of experienced lovers of green things. Add that to a pretty good ear for good gardening prose and enough exactitude to please without overwhelming, and Brandies and Mackey's book fills a real niche.
The level of specificity is this book's best attribute: To a degree I've never before encountered in a gardening book for Florida, "Cutting Garden" offers exact advice on when, where and what to plant in your garden to produce plenty of blooms. They begin the book with an excellent and efficient discussion of Florida's climactic and soil conditions before offering the the whys and hows of establishing a cutting garden, intelligently treating the installation of garden beds, mulching, frost insurance, pest control. Readers will find the best seasonal guide to planting I've found for Florida (with the exception of MacCubbin's Month-by-month Gardening In Florida) and a fine section on starting plants from seeds and cutting.
Florida's humidity, heat and sun make growing Foxglove, Snapdragons, Delphinum, Stock, and many other traditional cutting flowers difficult. Mackey and Brandies advise planting many of these perennials as biennials, taking advantage of Central Florida's nearly frost-free climate to plant seedlings in November for blooms in February through June. Of course, since most of these plants aren't available in the nurseries around here, you'll have to start them as seeds. The book offers advice on specific cultivars and species, and even seed distributors.
A long chapter, the best of its kind for Florida, is devoted to bulbs that work in Central Florida's sandy, hot and nematode-prone soils. Many of these are hard-to-find or "old-fashioned" bulbs that have fallen out of favor: Sparaxis, Freesia, Camassia, Babiana, Watsonia and Tritonia. (They can be purchased through easytogrowbulbs.com, which specializes in hot-climate bulbs.) Some bulbs are practically care-free: Spraxis and Watsonia, for instance, are essentially Gladiolus, bulbs that perform well here 10 months of the year. Some of the bulbs they recommend Ranunculus and (maybe) Oxalis will have to be dug out and stored. Frankly, many of these bulbs cost less than a dollar apiece when bought in quantity -- I plan to treat them like annuals and, if they come back next year, so much the better.
Especially strong is their concentration on atypical bulbs, perennials and annuals -- plants like Candytuft, Bells of Ireland, Sweet William Catchfly, Toadflax, Laurentia, Pot Marigolds, Shoo-fly Plants, and Love in a Mist. I haven't had a chance to try any of these, but I've bought the seeds at Thompson & Morgan and Parks Seeds and already started many of them.
Since this is a book devoted to cutting gardens, every flower entry has directions on how to cut and best preserve the flowers for long vase life. The last part of the book is devoted to a discussion of flower arranging -- not my thing, personally, but the advice is good.
Some minor gripes, and then I'll have to bring this review to a close: There's practically no discussion of the garden rose -- the best flower, for cutting or otherwise, here in Central Florida. The authors admit that roses should find their way into every garden, but offer little in the way of substantive advice on choice and cultivation. For that, you'll have to turn to Barbara Oehlbeck's quirky but excellent For the Love of Roses in Florida and Elsewhere. Mackey and Brandies give short shrift to orchids, too, though they are fairly easy to grow here in Florida and make excellent cut flowers.
Finally, I haven't seen the latest edition of the book, but the second edition lacks photographs, illustrations amounting to a few sketches that aren't terribly useful. For pictures to go with the excellent text descriptions, you'll have to look on the web (Dave's Garden is a great place to start) or in other books (Florida Gardener's Guide by Georgia Tasker and Tom MacCubbin has the best, most useful illustrations for Florida flora that I've found).
Great advice for the Florida cutting garden.......2003-09-09
Living in Florida I can vouch for the difficulties of growing just about anything in the sandy, nutrient poor, water deficient soil. Starting from that less than perfect base Betty Barr Mackey and Monica Moran Brandies walk the reader through the various things they need to know in order to grow a beautiful cutting garden. From finding the right place, to properly preparing the soil, to picking the appropriate flowers for soil, sun, and moisture conditions "A Cutting Garden for Florida" covers everything you need to know to have a successful garden. It even covers germination times, when a particular flower blooms, how long it blooms, and other information so you can make sure that when one flower goes out of season another is coming in. This is a highly recommended book for anyone dealing with the daunting task of getting flowers to grow in Florida.
Absolutely fantastic! A must for your garden bookshelf!.......2002-10-12
Simply fabulous is the word for this book and not only for those gardeners who live in Florida! A Cutting Garden For Florida was written to help those who live there learn to extend the season and be able to grow plants for bouquets in both the warm and cool seasons however a gardener in the northern states could just as easily adapt the information to their specific climate.
This is one of the few gardening books that has kept me intrigued enough to not want to put it down until I was finished with it. Also it does contain a lot of basic information about seed starting, choosing a site and other information a more advanced gardener would already know I would still highly recommend this book as there is information that even they may not know.
The book goes on to give specific details about various plants that make excellent cut flowers, as well as tips for drying the bouquets and basic flower design techniques.
This one is definitely up there on my list of books you simply must have regardless of where you live but if you live in Florida you simply cannot do without this one!
A superb horticultural and cultivational guide.......2001-12-13
Now available in a newly revised, expanded and updated third edition, A Cutting Garden For Florida continues to be a marvelously detailed, instructive, easy to understand guide to growing top-class flowers for bouquets and landscape improvement. Nursing seedlings, propagating plants from cuttings, as well as forming a cutting garden with annuals, biennials, perennials, or trees and shrubs are all covered, with easy-to-follow instructions delivered in clear, direct prose. Black and white sketches of various plants illustrate the techniques and species-specific entries. A Cutting Garden For Florida is a superb horticultural and cultivational guide and a "must" not just for Florida's gardening enthusiasts, but for anyone interested in creating a beautiful cutting garden of their own!
Product Description
As useful as your favorite cookbook, Flower Staying Power is a resourceful guide packed with countless "need to know" tips about caring for, understanding and preserving flowers. Filled with quotes as inspirational and beautiful as the lush photographs they accompany, the book teaches you how to treat and prolong the exquisite blooms cut from your garden or chosen from your favorite local stand or market. Whether you are planning, planting or enjoying your garden, Flower Staying Power's detailed reference chart of the 101 best cut flowers will help you expand your cutting garden, and is the ultimate guide to prolonging the life, beauty and joy of fresh cut flowers. This book makes a perfect gift for the flower lover.
Customer Reviews:
Flower Staying Power.......2005-03-29
I loved this book!! I really like cut flowers, but get discouraged when they die after a day or two. I've used some of the techniques cited in the book and my flowers last a lot longer. I've even tried drying one of my arrangements and it looks great. The table "101 of the Best Cut Flowers" is amazing and very useful. It tells you what the vase life for each flower is and how to prepare it. It's just awesome!
Customer Reviews:
A great resource.......2000-03-01
Highly recommended for readers who want not only to look at beautiful pictures, but want a complete bibliography of plants including zone information and complimentry plantings. This book demonstrates that you can have beautiful cutting gardens that fit within a landscape rather than separate landscape beds and cutting beds.
Book Description
As an accomplished gardener and professional florist, Linda Beutler offers unique insights into creating inspired floral arrangements and growing the plants that go into them. Among the topics that Beutler discusses are the philosophy of floral design; making creative use of plants you're already growing; techniques of harvesting and preparing cut flowers; "bouquet basics"; and creating arrangements for special occasions. The book culminates in "Plants for the Cutting Garden: Flowers, Foliage, and Fruit," which contains detailed descriptions of more than 200 outstanding plants. Adding greatly to the book's appeal and usefulness are Allan Mandell's breathtaking photographs of flowers in every stage from the garden to finished arrangement.
Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive, useful and fun........2007-07-29
I have been working on a cut flower project for two years and have done a lot of reading on the subject. I didn't think I really needed another book, but the lovely photos talked me into it. I am so glad they did! Not only have I learned some new things (like how to rinse sap producing flowers so they don't hurt the others in the vase) but the author's friendly and eloquent writing style is so much fun to read. Her rich experience with cut flowers and clear and enjoyable style will benefit everyone. Definitely a gem.
Book Description
With detailed descriptions, stunning photographs, and essential advice, noted garden experts Willliams C. Welch and Neil G. Odenwald invite you to join the rich Southern tradition of growing and sharing cut flowers.
Customer Reviews:
unbelievable.......2007-08-11
I've given away most of my gardening books-from lack of interest. Checked this one out from the library and must buy it so that I may underline. Mr. Welch GETS IT. He knows we want beauty in our lives, but we can't babysit picky plants that when they succeed, we're too proud of them to cut!. Here is the definitave word on how to grow inexpensive masses of color from seed and how to preserve cut flowers in the vase. Quite a few of his plant suggestions were new to me for my zone--This book gives me information for the exact reason I raise flowers, to play with them!
Beautiful, lavishly illustrated compendium........2000-04-25
The Bountiful Flower Garden is a beautiful, lavishly illustrated compendium for growing and showcasing cut flowers from the southern garden. Beginning with the influences of the European, Asian and American heritages. The Bountiful Flower Garden reveals how to extend the life of cut flowers in order to bring their beauty indoors. It details when, how and where to cut, as well as when and how to employ chemical extenders. The Bountiful Flower Garden offers the reader invaluable information on other plants effective in cut-flower arranging. The Bountiful Flower Garden is enhanced with lists, essays, and step-by-step instructions regarding trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals, foliage plants, and berry/fruit plants. The Bountiful Flower Garden is the definitive guide and a wonderful book for family gardeners and interior designers to simply browse through in search of ideas and possibilities for enriching the atmosphere and decor of homes and offices.
Fine Gardening
...the book's strongest suit is the abundance of detailed instruction on creating a variety of arrangements, using casual materials like kitchen pitchers, small glass bottles, or bowls to display freshly picked and naturally grouped compositions of flowers, foliage, fruit, twigs, and berries.
Book Description
Turn the beauty, freshness, and fragrance of a garden into simple yet stunning floral displays with Arranging Flowers from your Garden. This all-new guide combines instruction on cultivating a beautiful, practical cutting garden with how-to techniques on the art of flower arranging. Lushly photographed, Arranging Flowers from your Garden emphasizes informal, easy-to-create arrangements using readily available containers and favorite cut flowers. A dozen professionally-designed cutting garden plans plus eight reference charts help in selecting flowers, foliage, grasses, and berries that will accent a garden now and grace a tabletop later.
Amazon.com
The courageous and levelheaded Straight Parents, Gay Children, Armistead Maupin comments, "shows the parents of gay children how to stop merely tolerating their kids and start being their heroes." Robert A. Bernstein made this essential move to "heroism" himself after his daughter Bobbi came out to him and her stepmother in the mid-1980s, when she was 19. Soon after, they attended a meeting of P-FLAG (Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays) at a nearby church, and Bernstein realized that he had joined a small but powerful group of people unable to support the continued oppression of their gay loved ones. Bernstein brings together stirring quotes (even from such unlikely sources as the late Senator Barry Goldwater) and inspiring stories, like those of Jane Spahr, the first openly gay minister to be called as a pastor of the Presbyterian church (and later denied the post) and of Dr. Roscoe Thorne, a former lumberjack and weightlifter who spoke to a packed room at a military hearing set up to discharge his son from the navy despite his brilliant career as a "Top Gun" pilot. A useful book for therapists, clergy, and educators, and an essential resource for parents of gay and bisexual children. --Regina Marler
Book Description
The author is the former national vice president of P-FLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and this is his personal account of a father who came to terms with his daughter's homosexuality.
Customer Reviews:
My son is gay..........2007-08-07
When my son showed a general disinterest of women I wasn't too concerned after all most boys don't admit to liking girls and call them icky and say they have kookies and stuff. This hadn't changed even when he was in highschool though that's when I started to get worried. He had a different boy in the house almost every day and was always asking to have sleep overs at their house. They had sleepovers my house too sometimes. One night he had two boys over-Richard and Alexander.
Richard and Alexander were wearing blushon and wearing mesh tanked-tops that accentuated the chest area. Something just wasn't right with this picture. After it got dark I heard a cacophony of strangeness in his room and peeked inside. I couldn't believe my eyes. My son was being tortured by these weirdos! I bust up in the room and saved him from them.
I pulled Alexander off of him first and gave him a rapid-punch to the kidneys that took him down immediately. I followed that with a swift kick to the face that really floored him. Richard was trying to escape! I gave him a kick to the back and sent him flying down the stairs. I called the cops to make sure they arrested these 'nair'-do-wells.
In the mean time though, my son was in such shock from what happened that he was hopping around and making all these strange noises. I tried my best to calm him down. I had a horrible surprise coming to me though. The police arrested me by accident! When they were booking me they kept saying something like, 'hate-crime' over and over. I was given ten years in prison for defending my son.
Later my son told me that he liked what they were doing to them and I had made a big mistake. He got me this book to help teach me about it. Little did he know that where I was going I would get a masterclass in the subject.
Understanding and accepting your gay child.......2004-09-02
The 30th anniversary of PFLAG is a fitting time for this updated edition. Former national vice president of PFLAG, Robert Bernstein has chronicled not only his own journey to acceptance and support of his lesbian daughter, but also the founding and continuing growth of PFLAG.
Moving stories of the founders and leaders of PFLAG blend with Bernstein's story. These tales underline the ability of loving parents to work together toward acceptance of their children's differences. Following their initial shock, guilt, and grief, all these parents have found their way to acceptance and respect for their special children. Their realization that this is still the child they love is the first great step. Most have gone on from this stage to help and support other parents through their early traumas and into the light and joy of truly sharing their children's lives. PFLAG plays a major role in all their lives. Many have become staunch advocates for equality and acceptance of their own and all other such children into the larger community.
Straight Parents, Gay Children includes stories of celebrities, politicians (even the Vice President of the US), and religious leaders of many faiths who have faced and accepted homosexuality for themselves or within their families. These highly visible community and national leaders stand in strong contrast to the homophobia and hatred so apparent in the public proclamations of other church and political leaders. A new chapter in this edition is devoted to these celebrities and other leaders.
Toward the end of the book is a "Survival Guide." It debunks the concept of guilt - that the parents "did something wrong" to make their child homosexual. This chapter presents arguments to overcome the shame and anger that usually erupt shortly after your child's announcement "Mom, Dad, I'm gay." You are led toward understanding and respect for your courageous child. And, if you are willing, you are led to publicly support not only your own child, but all who are subjected to marginalization due to their sexual or gender diversity.
Another new chapter in this edition, "Family Values," discusses gay and lesbian parenting. In "The Unreliability of Stereotypes," Bernstein discusses common stereotypes of policing, professional sports, and politics - where they are "...unmasked as, well, fairy tales."
As author Bernstein points out, "If you have a gay child, you are in the very best of company."
Great for parents who want enlightenment.......2003-03-03
And that's the problem with this book, if it's not read within its parameters. Robert A. Bernstein, inspired to write his book after his teenage daughter came out as a lesbian, has some wonderful examples of parental support of gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered children, and support for parents is the reason for the book. And the history of the parental group (P-FLAG) of such children is intriguing and informative. Certainly, just as gay and lesbian children need the support of their families, so their parents need their unique support systems. Unfortunately, parents who reject not only their childrens' "alternate" lifestyles but their children in whole, aren't likely to read Bernstein's book simply because they probably don't want to understand what they disdain for whatever reason. The real-life parent-child relationships posited here are wonderful, and it would be truly magnificent if all parent-child relationships could be as they are here. Additionally, the children in this book are older, not necessarily pre- and teenagers, thus exluding the parents of these age-specific issues. Further, many of the children cited here are usually on track toward personal and professional fulfillment, quite likely partly because of their parents' support. Unfortunately, a great many others, if not more, have either been fully abandoned by their parents and family or, if they haven't, don't have what could qualify as anything nearing a healthy relationship with their parents. By its title, Bernstein's novel is directed toward parents, and certainly they need support just as much as their children. But to conclude that all gay and lesbian children have their families' unconditional love and support would be a tragic mistake. Unfortunately, all too many parents, presumably affected by the fears and prejudices of homophobia, will likely never accept their childrens' alternative choices and will never have a need for a book like this. But for those parents who do, Bernstein's work is a wonderful beginning toward understanding.
Good for parents!.......2002-03-05
I just finishing reading this book. It was a good read but it is more or less for parents to read. Don't get me wrong, I learned some things: what parents go through, some things on society, history of p-flag, and such but it was not all that I hoped this book would be.
The author uses lots of high profile people as examples in this book so it was hard for someone like me to figure out just where I stand in life. As it will probably be for parents to place their child among these people who are exampled.
Most of the themes in this book are more adult rather than young teens to young adult.
It is a good attempt to give an overview of the "gay" world but it was not what I expected.
I would recomend this book for parents of gay children who want to learn more about the life style, history, p-flag, ect.
But not to learn about their children. The only way to do that is to ask them yourself.
Many good stories.......2001-08-26
Robert Bernstein's account of the development of P-Flag is emtional and inspiring. His book helps parents of gay children to learn about what gay means and how to accept their children. One flaw in this book is that all the examples he uses are men and women who have achieved high status as pretty much defined by society. Most of them are in "marriages", long-term relationships. All of this makes them look "just like" straight people. This position is only one of many taken by gay people and gay organizations. I wondered as I read this book where I fit in. None of those gay people were like me and I did not share many of their views. So where does that put gay people like myself in Bernstein's perspective? The book seems to whitewash much of the gay world. Bernstein does not seem to be in touch with the youth programs. As a volunteer in one of those programs, I can tesitfy that none of the teens in our project reflect the kind of gay people he described. That criticism aside, Bernstein's book attempts to fight bigotry and help straight parents climb the mountain, as one parent put it to dealing with their own issues and reaching out to their children in love.
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- The French Garden
- The Garden in Ancient Egypt
- The Garden Table: Elegant Outdoor Entertaining
- The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Flowers from Seed to Bloom: 576 annuals, perennials, and bulbs in full color (Potting-Bench Reference Books)
- The Gardens and Parks at Hampton Court Palace
- The Gifted Button: Fashion Buttons into Gorgeous Gifts and Wearable Art
- The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture
- The Living Tradition of Yup'Ik Masks: Agayuliyararput : Our Way of Making Prayer
- The Magical Garden of Claude Monet
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Flower Arranging
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American Cutting Garden: A Primer For Growing Cut Flowers Where Summers Are Hot And Winters Are Cold
Garden for Cutting
Cutting Gardens: The Complete Guide to Growing Flowers and Creating Spectacular Arrangements for Every Season and Every Region
Cutting Garden: Growing and Arranging Garden Flowers
Flowers for Sale: Growing and Marketing Cut Flowers : Backyard to Small Acreage (A Bootstrap Guide)
