cover image The Gardener's Gripe Book

The Gardener's Gripe Book

Abby Adams. Workman Publishing, $10.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-56305-647-5

A very funny down-to-earth gardener takes a swipe at gardening pretense and vows to ""tell no lies."" With Will Rogers-style good will and common sense, pet peeves grow into a belly-laugh of a book. The well-organized myriad of topics includes: a respectable and entertaining history of gardening (""From Eve to Martha Stewart""); the wrongfully maligned lawn and its environmentally-correct alternatives (e.g., meadows-in-cans-""It is better to tear your money into little pieces and scatter them to the wind""); dirt (a soil analysis by an extension agent is like an astrologer saying ""you have 3 planets in your 6th house, when all you want to know is whether or not you should get married""). Equally amusing are ventings on vegetables, perennials, ""tree$"" and garden enemies (don't miss the repellent recipe calling for Japanese beetles in the blender-""this is the fun part""). Longer chapters are spliced with essays such as ""Gourmet Gardeners"" who ""clip recipes from gardening magazines (this is equivalent to gleaning medical advice from Vanity Fair"") and ""Smell"" (""`Aromatic' herbs mostly aren't""; paperwhites and hyacinths are ""olfactory offenders""). A welcome, resounding reveille for gardeners who have dwelt too long with glossy pictures and impossible expert advice. (Mar.)