Wow, I’m honored to report that Arthur Lee Jacobson, the tree guru himself, has paid a very high compliment to the late Stephanie Feeney and me for the Northwest Gardeners’ Resource Directory (9th ed.). This book is the “yellow pages” for gardeners in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia that Stephanie started in the 1990s and grew as a self-published reference through eight wonderful editions. We lost Stephanie in 2000, a premature death due to cancer at age 52. Before she died, Stephanie and her husband Larry Feeney sold NWGRD to Seattle-based Sasquatch Books. And thanks to some gentle nudging from Stephanie, Sasquatch editorial director Gary Luke asked me to revised and edit the ninth edition. This was my “first” chance at writing and editing a garden book, published in 2002. I am eternally grateful to my friend Stephanie for believing in me.

Arthur Lee’s periodic newsletters are always filled with useful information about his many writing and consulting projects, including his books, Trees of Seattle 2nd edition (2006) and Wild Plants of Greater Seattle (2001), two amazing references for anyone wishing to learn more about the Emerald City’s flora, native and exotic alike. His latest newsletter, out in late November 2007, included this wonderful entry:

“The top dozen from my library of some 325 PLANT book titles, that I would keep if forced to reduce from 30 feet of shelf space to about 2 feet 8 inches . . . assuming copies of books written by myself could be kept” —

Listed among venerable titles like Hortus Third, American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, Sunset Western Garden Book  and Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs, Arthur Lee has included our directory as a must-have book on his library shelf:

“Northwest Gardeners’ Resource Directory: All Northwest gardeners will find this helpful, though a new edition would be better.”

I agree! It would be ideal to update the reference book that Stephanie spent more than a decade developing and I spent the better part of a year working on, as I updated tens of thousands of entries. But lots has happened since 2002.

First of all, the Internet has made it easier to find nursery and plant sources, public gardens, horticultural organizations, garden tours, retail emporiums and more. Second, because of the Internet, it seems like a directory like ours would be ideally suited for an online database. So how will that happen? I’m open to ideas. For now, Sasquatch Books isn’t particularly inclined to publish an online directory, as it is still rooted in the world of printed books. My thought is to find someone (or a group of someones) interested in creating a new model – and find a way for that group to run the directory as a nonprofit or for-profit web site.

In the meantime, people wishing to send me updates about changes in the Northwest gardening world are invited to fill out a form on my web site. I try to post these changes, including the opening of new nurseries or other changes, on that section of www.debraprinzing.com.

Stephanie Feeney and Debra in Stephanie’s garden on Lake Whatcom, Bellingham, Wash. [Gary Luke photograph]

It puts a smile on my face (and I know Stephanie is smiling up there, too) to know that our friend Arthur Lee still uses his five-year-old version of the Northwest Gardener’s Resource Directory. If his copy is anything like the one on my desk, it is a bit dog-eared, with post-it notes sticking every which way from important pages, and my notations in the margins about special discoveries while traveling the Northwest’s horticultural highways.

Now that I am trying to learn and discover new sources for plants, gardens and tours, I sure could use a directory like ours in Southern California!

P.S. It isn’t fair to end this post without giving you the complete list of Arthur Lee’s “essential” books. His encyclopedic mind is unparalleled. This list will explain in part why I’m so tickled to see our little local directory included:

1. The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture,  6 vol. (1914-1917); New York: MacMillan, by Liberty Hyde Bailey.  “The greatest horticultural title ever produced in America. It utterly shames modern works such as the RHS Dictionary of Gardening. Its completeness, erudition, illustration and layout are all superb.
2. Hortus Third (1976); New York: MacMillan, by Liberty Hyde Bailey, revised by L.H. Hortorium Staff. “A scholarly, concise, enumeration of horticultural plants grown in North America, and their myriad names.”
3. Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles,  8th ed. (1970-1980), 4 vols; London: John Murray; D. L. Clarke, chief ed. “Comprehensive, learned account of cultivated temperate-zone woody plants. Weak in U.S. cultivars.”
4. American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (1997); New York: DK Publishing, by Christopher Brickell and Judith D. Zuk. “Of the clumsily stout and heavy modern encyclopedic books packed with color photos, I prefer this.”
5. Landscape Plant Problems: A Pictorial Diagnostic Manual,  3rd ed. (2006); Puyallup, WA: Washington State University Cooperative Extension, by Ralph Byther et al. “Color photos of Western Washington common garden plant bugs and diseases. When consulting, I use the photos to show clients. Once one learns the problem’s name, then other sources suggest actions. (You can buy this at South Seattle Community College’s bookstore).”
6. Cornucopia II: A Source Book of Edible Plants,  2nd ed. (1998); Vista, CA: Kampong Publications, by Stephen Facciola. “The most practical and handy book to learn about edibility of plants, and their availability.”
7. Northwest Gardener’s Resource Directory,  9th ed. (2002); Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Press, by Stephanie Feeney (ed. Debra Prinzing). “All Northwest gardeners will find this helpful, though a new edition would be better.”
8. The Plant Locator(R) Western Region (2004); Portland, OR: Black-Eyed Susan Press and Timber Press, by Susan Hill and Susan Narizny. “The quickest way to learn about commercial availability of garden plants. More than 60,000 plants included.”
9. Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs,  7th ed. (2002); Newton Abbot, England: David & Charles, John Hillier and Allen Coombes. “Useful one-volume, compact and comprehensive list of cultivated temperate-zone woody plants. Weak in U.S. cultivars.”
10. The Plant Book: A Portable Dictionary of the Vascular Plants,  2nd ed. (1997); Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, by D. J. Mabberley. “By far the best one-volume source to look up any plant family of genus. Small, dense and invaluable.”
11. New Flora of the British Isles,  2nd ed. (1997); New York: Cambridge University Press, by Clive Stace. “The best botany book to identify non-native plants growing wild in the Seattle area. Richly complete; over 1,000 pages.”
12. Sunset Western Garden Book,  8th ed. (2007); Menlo Park, CA: Sunset Publishing Corp., Kathy Brenzel, editor. “All western North American gardeners should own this. Every edition gets better.”

Editors at the New Oxford American Dictionary recently announced that “locavore” is their word of the year.

Locavore: someone who eats locally grown food.

Watching this wonderful word move into the mainstream is both gratifying and a little worrisome. Will locavore become a politicized label, like recent research reports concluding that owners of hybrid cars are active, educated and Democrat? Will locavore suffer from overuse, watered down for marketers’ convenience, as “organic” and “all-natural” have been? I hope neither. I hope, like the Slow Food movement, that this word will remain a cherished symbol of grassroots passion about the character (and food) of a specific place on earth. Namely: your own backyard. And for this reason, I maintain that gardeners at their very hearts, are also locavores.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a wonderful new book by Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, is the authentic locavore manifesto. In it, megastar novelist Kingsolver and her family document “a year of food life,” in which they attempted to grow and produce as much of their own food as possible. And when the food doesn’t come from their own small farm in the southern Appalacians, it is supplied by local farmers who use sustainable practices. I received this book as a gift from my dear friend Britt Olson. Reading it this autumn has given me renewed hope in the power of one’s own small patch of soil — and what can be grown there.

As I’m trying to renovate a sterile, suburban backyard so that it can be planted next March, I’m thinking about all the delicious, nourishing vegetables and herbs that it will produce (not to mention seasonal flowers that I can enjoy and use in arrangements). I’ll never reach the status of a 100-percent locavore, but if I can at least grow some of my own food supply, it will be a start. It is a gardener’s obligation, I think, to grow edible as well as ornamental crops.

Cauliflowers from Underwood Family Farms in Somis, CA

The farmer’s market is open this afternoon, and I’m off to buy organic eggs (although one has to arrive at 2 p.m. on the spot in order to get the lovely blue-green Araucana eggs), fingerling potatoes, colorful cauliflowers, and autumn fruit. Perhaps I’m a locavore-wannabe, but it’s sure better than the alternative.

I’m always happy when the monthly Southern California Horticultural Society meetings roll around (second Thursday of each month), despite the requisite l-o-n-g drive on LA freeways to get there. Last night was a plant-lovers’ celebration, featuring ceanothus expert and nurseryman David Fross. Ceanothus includes the North American native plants known as wild lilacs, mountain lilacs, California lilacs, blue-blossoms, and buck-brushes.

David Fross, founder of Native Sons wholesale nursery in Arroyo Grande, CA, coauthored Ceanothus (Timber Press, 2006) with Dieter Wilken, botanist at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. The 272-page book is a tribute to Fross’s lifelong love affair with the blue-flowering woody shrub. The seduction is evident in his text:

“Each spring, tints and shades of azure, cobalt, indigo, and cerulean surface in the chaparral of California as if to offer a new name for the Golden State. Madder blue, milk-blue, and lavender, and then there are the blues of the sea — aqua, ultramarine, and a hue found only in the Sea of Cortes. The genus includes plants with flowers of each of these colors, and more: cyanine, sky blue, and the flinty hues of slate.”

According to Fross, who divides this plant monograph into two sections — “Ceanothus in the Garden and Landscape” and “Ceanothus in the Wild” — the English are much more creative than North American gardeners in planting ceanothus, using it as a hedge, groundcover, specimen tree, or climbing/espaliered embroidery on the face of an ancient stone building. “In London, they use ceanothus everywhere,” Fross proclaimed, saying he once counted 17 ceanothus plantings between his London hotel and the train station.

Luckily, it’s not too late to start using the hundreds of species and cultivars outlined in Ceanothus. For a guide, I’ll turn to page 125, Fross’s useful selection reference. He suggests cultivars for good garden tolerance, covering banks, groundcovers, informal hedges and screens, specimens and small trees, small garden spaces, seashore and shade. Plus, he lists eight variegated cultivars; I am a sucker for variegated foliage (I inherited an early specimen of Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var. griseus‘Diamond Heights’ from my pals at Seattle’s Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in the early 2000s, and enjoyed the awesome gold-and-green chevron-marked foliage in a glazed Chinese-red container before transferring the plant to the front slope of my Seattle garden, where I hope it still lives). Fross also lists summer flowering ceanothus, plants with large inflorescences, fast-growing cultivars and white blooms.

In Seattle, ceanothus has the reputation for being short-lived and finicky (I remember early on over watering ‘Julia Phelps’ only to watch her succumb from too much of a good thing). Now, I’m excited to try this “classic California genus” in my Zone 10 landscape. One spot on my must-visit list: Leaning Pine Arboretum, California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, where there is an extensive display of California native ceanothus (Fross directed the development of the California Collection there).

MORE PLANTS

One of the other nifty features at the SoCal Hort meetings is “Plant Forum.” Like an old fashioned garden club activity, members bring in plants, cuttings, flowers, fruits and seeds to just show off the bounty of their own backyard. I love the amazing variety of samples on display – most of which are completely new to me.

Last night, a highlight was one member’s box of just-picked Hachiya persimmons, lined up like perfectly-formed eggs in a crate. The skin color – difficult to describe, but you know the word persimmon conjures up visions of something spicy, exotic and rare….and that’s how these delightful fruits appear to me. They are as vivid as a setting sun over the Pacific Ocean. Having lived in SoCal from 1967 to 1970 when I was young, I have strong memories of my midwest Mom not knowing what on earth to do with the persimmon tree in our backyard. She found one recipe for persimmon cookies. They tasted chewy and were seasoned with cinnamon and other spices (ginger? allspice? nutmeg?)….I’ve asked Mom to find the recipe. Now I have four delicious-looking fruits in my kitchen window, awaiting the transformation with said recipe into cookies for my own children.

A few other specimens from fellow SoCal members got me excited, too:

Hakea laurina (Pincushion) – Australian, large shrub to 12-feet, fall-blooming

Nerine (mixed) – South African bulbs, to 2 feet, fall-blooming

Clerodendrum ugandense (Butterfly bush) – African, to 20 ft, nearly ever-blooming

Aloe bellatula – blooms at various times, from Madagascar

Salvia confertiflora – Brazilian, 4-6 feet tall x 4 feet wide, blooms all year (hummingbirds love it); cut back hard, sun/dry conditions

Fall bouquet – including Senna artemisioides, Adenathos sericea (Woolly bush), Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’, Grevillea ‘Moonlight’, and Tagetes lemmonii.

[Spencer Johnson photograph]

Celebrating Braiden Rex-Johnson’s book launch at Pike Place Market’s Steelhead Diner

I’m still high from a completely indulgent trip to Seattle for a 24-hour visit on November 1st. The somewhat skeptical guys in my household are not convinced it was a “necessity,” but of course the best things in life – friendship – are indeed a necessity… as they feed our spirits and souls and remind us of all that is good in the face of less-than-good forces in the world.

The purpose for my trip was to help food-goddess and dear friend Braiden Rex-Johnson celebrate the launch of her newest (6th? 7th? – I’ve lost count!) cookbook, “Pacific Northwest Wining and Dining” (John Wiley & Sons). The book’s subtitle: “The People, Places, Food, and Drink of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia,”may be a mouthful, but what a savory and mouth-watering mouthful it is. Braiden spent the better part of two years traveling the PNW to meet pioneering winemakers and innovative chefs. With her talent for storytelling and her savvy knowledge for wine-and-food pairings, Braiden’s 270-page tome is delectable (as are Jackie Johnston’s lovely photographs that transport me to each special spot on the NW map).

I feel like Braiden has escorted me far off of “the-beaten-path” to some of my favorite places on earth; but with her as my guide, I see it with new eyes, savor it with an eager palate and embrace her profound appreciation for all things local and seasonal.

In her essay, “What is Northwest Cuisine?” Braiden speaks of food and wine in a manner that will resonate with many gardeners (who also understand the importance of terroir, of place):

“The Northwest’s enticing indigenous ingredients — morels and chanterelles, clams and mussels, crab, salmon, lamb, berries, apples, pears, lettuces, and greens — help define the region’s cuisine. There’s a profound connection between Northwest Cuisine and the varied terrain that inspires it. But the starting point is always fresh ingredients — natural bounty of the Northwest. It is a very seasonal cuisine, a cuisine solidly grounded in the local provender.”

I love this woman, her passion, her intensity, her focus, her professionalism, her sense of irony and her way with words. Braiden delivers up a full menu of delicious stories, personal insights, intimate profiles, and inspiring, but achievable recipes. I can’t wait to prepare some of the exciting recipes in this book, including Sea Scallops with Spiced Carrot-Dill Sauce (to be enjoyed with Riesling) or Walla Walla Sweet Onion Frittata (with Chardonnay as a companion). UPDATE: Click here to read a wonderful review (and get a great recipe to try) about Braiden and PNW Wining & Dining in the December 5, 2008 issue of Seattle Post-Intelligencer; story by Rebekah Denn.

Honestly, flying to Seattle from Burbank (2-1/4 hours) is no harder than driving to LA sometimes. And so the journey was easy. And the reward was rich: to walk into the book party and see Braiden’s expression of surprise and laughter (and a few tears) in response. If I can ever write about gardens, plants, and flowers the way she writes about food ingredients and wine-as-food, I will be a happy woman.

Reading great garden writing is one of life’s joys. And one of my favorite pastimes is to spend time savoring the words written by friends and fellow garden writers.

Here are two books I recently reviewed for Pacific Horticulture magazine (an important resource for anyone who gardens in the West).

The Bellevue Botanical Garden: Celebrating the First 15 Years, by Marty Wingate (2007, The Bellevue Botanical Garden Society), 9×12 inches, 112 pages, $19.95. To order: Bellevue Botanical Garden.

“The moment you enter the garden, you will sense that the BBG is as personal as a beloved private garden,” writes Nancy Davidson Short in her back-cover tribute to this book. Indeed, in author Marty Wingate’s colorful narrative of this relatively young garden, the passion of its supporters’ “ownership” influences all aspects of the Bellevue Botanical Garden’s inception and evolution.

To celebrate the garden’s first 15 years, the BBG Society asked Wingate and book designer Virginia Hand to sift through decades of archival material dating back to the 1940s, conduct first-person interviews, and edit hundreds of images contributed by volunteer and professional horticultural photographers. The result is a timely and timeless document that captures the roots of BBG – from the gift of land by benefactors Cal and Harriet Shorts to the partnership between the BBG Society and the City of Bellevue’s Parks Department.

Revealing her talents as a garden tour guide and garden writer, Wingate escorts her readers through BBG’s multilayered narrative, stopping at important venues to recount a small historical detail, or focusing closely on noteworthy plant specimens. She enthusiastically retells the story of this “living jewel” and its influence on regional, national and international audiences who number 300,000 visitors each year.

The book’s most inspiring section covers “The Gardens” — including the Entrance Garden, Northwest Perennial Alliance Borders, Yao Japanese Garden, Shorts Ground Cover Garden, Waterwise Garden, Alpine Rock Garden, Fuchsia Garden, Native Discovery Garden and Lost Meadow/Loop Trail.

Illustrated with exquisite photographs of plant combinations and garden portraits, the history of these specialty gardens is also shared through interviews with key volunteers who helped design, install, tend to and nurture their creation.

And ultimately, that’s the heart and soul of this book: How members of the gardening community – from avid lay gardeners to professional landscape designers and horticultural educators – turned the dream of a botanical garden into a beautiful reality for the public.

California Gardener’s Guide, Volume II, by Nan Sterman (2007, Cool Springs Press) 7×10 inches, 271 pages, $24.95. To order: Plant Soup.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being more than a little familiar with the format of Nan Sterman’s excellent new book, California Gardener’s Guide, Volume II. In 2005, Mary Robson and I coauthored the Washington and Oregon Gardener’s Guide, its Northwest cousin.

I am a newcomer to California, having relocated to Ventura County in August 2006. And I’ve been waiting for this book ever since. Having given up my Seattle garden, along with plants like hostas and hellebores that loved shade and moist growing conditions, I’m faced with a new backyard, a tabula rasa for a novice to California gardening. Like many gardeners, I want to grow and nurture plants that are appropriate for my surroundings, including ornamental natives.

Sterman, a California gardening expert who embraces sustainable practices such as designing with drought-tolerant plants, serves up her top recommendations: 186 plants for California’s diverse growing areas.

This is no small task, as Sterman notes in her introduction: “From north to south and east to west, there are dramatic differences in vegetation, geology, topography and climate.”

Before revealing her recommendations for the “best of the best” — annuals/biennials, bulbs, fruits, groundcovers, herbs, ornamental grasses, perennials, shrubs, succulents, trees and vines — Sterman introduces the beginning gardener (or California newbies like me) to the state’s five primary growing regions. She includes useful charts that outline average annual rainfall, maximum and minimum temperatures for each region, including: the coast, inland valleys, the Central Valley, low deserts and high deserts.

With Mediterranean conditions accounting for much of the state’s geogrpahy, Sterman zeroes in on native plants and those from other Mediterranean regions adapted to California’s low-water conditions. She also covers “thirstier” plants, edibles and ornamentals that are noteworthy for their “return on investment” (fruit, berries or fragrance). In the one-page plant profiles, Sterman makes note of species with low water, moderate water and high water needs. Useful icons also indicate whether the plant attracts butterflies or hummingbirds, supports bees, is edible, fragrant, produces fruits, is long-blooming or appropriate as a cut flower, provides food or shelter for wildlife, has colorful foliage, is drought tolerant, a good container plant, grows well in Mediterranean conditions, adds a tropical look to the garden, tolerates coastal conditions and is a California native.

I really appreciate the “zone” graphic which shows a tiny map of California on each page (this is a clever feature that I wish Mary and I had used in our version of the state plant guide). The map is shaded to allow readers to tell at-a-glance whether a plant is hardy for the region in which they live; Sterman also includes the estimated minimum temperature for the plant.

Now I can take the California Gardener’s Guide along on plant-shopping excursions and use it to find something other than the ubiquitous agapanthus (okay, we thought that was a “rare” plant in Seattle: now I see it growing in clumps at the corner gas station!).