cover image Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead: Five Steps to the Drop-Dead Gorgeous Garden of Your Dreams

Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead: Five Steps to the Drop-Dead Gorgeous Garden of Your Dreams

Cassandra Danz, Cassandra Dang. Crown Publishers, $25 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-517-70554-4

Danz (Mrs. Greenthumbs) adroitly blends practical gardening advice and wacky humor as she shows how to create an American form of the English cottage garden. No lover of vast expanses of suburban green lawns, Danz believes gardens should be private places that offer solace from a noisy, stressful world. The word ""paradise,"" she notes, means ""a garden"" in Persian. Danz offers five maxims for having one's own paradise: create a separate place from the world; plant perennials and plant them abundantly; use plants that grow easily in your climate and location; have something blooming throughout the gardening season; and don't plant magenta next to taxicab yellow. Her chapters burst with information about how, what, when and where to plant, along with advice on what to do about voracious deer and how to think of a gardenscape in terms of a series of outdoor rooms. In her highly idiosyncratic style, Danz weaves anecdotes about friends, neighbors, flower shows, Middle Eastern architecture and plant personalities into her narrative with such flair that even the pages on composting and mulching are entertaining. Reading this book is akin to having a visit from a learned horticulturist and your practical aunt who has gardened forever. Major ad/promo; author tour (Feb.)