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New Resource For Gardeners

The Informed Gardener

By Linda Chalker-Scott,

University of Washington Press, 2008

Reviewed by Elaina M. Jorgensen

Imagine, the perfect purple azalea: green leaves gracefully upturned and an explosion of delicate, deep purple flowers. My neighbor had one, and I had coveted it for years. So on one fine spring morning, I trekked to the local nursery, on a mission for the perfect purple azalea.

Through acres of potted flowering cherry trees, past the wandering honeysuckle and clematis, maneuvering around the Red Rider wagon shoppers and the racing children, I risked sunburn and disappoint searching for the perfect purple azalea.

Ah, the rhododendrons; the azaleas will be close. The two plants are in the same genus but differ in size and the location of the flowers. And there they were. Rows of red flowering azaleas: so sassy. White flowers: very nice, but stay focused. Pink flowers: when will this teasing end? There it is: a purple flowering azalea, the last one. Tantalizing. I was giddy. I snatched it up, ready to defend my prize, fingers tingling at the near miss. I gathered it up to me, my face buried in the green leaves, the perfect purple blossoms tickling my nose.

I brought it home and planted it, proudly and prominently in the front garden patch, where all the dog walkers and neighbors could admire it. And every day when I came home I would smile at my perfect purple azalea. I loved it.

As spring turned to summer the blossoms eventually died off, but it was time. As the summer wore on though, my perfect azalea seemed to droop a little. I thought this was normal, after all I was religious about watering it as instructed and I had been very careful to plant it as instructed.

It continued to droop. And every day when I came home I would ponder my little azalea. I searched online, bought azalea-specific fertilizer, consulted master gardeners. My azalea floundered and by the beginning of fall, it was dead. Crestfallen, I dug it up and put it in a pot of topsoil, hoping beyond hope that it would somehow, miraculously spring back to life.

It is sitting on the back porch, a uniform brown, crispy fire hazard in a pot of dirt.

If only Linda Chalker-Scott's book, The Informed Gardener, had been available last year, perhaps this heartbreak could have been avoided.

The goal the book is, as Chalker-Scott says in the preface, "to raise consciousness about a number of misconceptions regarding the management of landscapes dominated by woody plants, or trees and shrubs.”

This isn't to say that you can't apply the knowledge you'll gain from reading this to your indoor plants and vegetable garden. Indeed, after reading this book, I was inspired to repot several of my house plants, since I knew they had the same problem that likely killed my sweet azalea: circling roots.

Chalker-Scott points out that many nurseries will void the warranty on a plant if the root ball is disturbed. After all, roots are fragile and vital to the health of the plant. However, in many cases the pot is too small for the plant or the plant has been in the pot too long and the roots, with nowhere else to go, circle around the inside of the pot. Even after repotting, these roots will continue to circle.

When I transplanted my azalea from its pot to the garden, I was careful not to damage the roots. But I noticed when I removed the azalea from the garden after it died that the root mass was in the exact shape of the original pot.

My indoor plants were in a similar state.

Not to make the same mistake twice, I followed the author's advice and removed the plants from their pots, broke apart and cleaned up the root mass, snipping off dead roots and roots that were circling, and repotted them. It was terrifying initially but became more natural after the first few. Now the plants look great.

There are several sections to the book and within each are several short chapters. The information on circling roots and how to deal with them is covered in the chapter "The Myth of Fragile Roots” under the section "Understanding How Plants Work.”

The section entitled "Soil Additives” covers the ins and outs of fertilizing. Given the state of the roots of my azalea, all the fertilizer in the world would not have helped (actually, I found this out for myself during my ordeal). But I was interested to learn just how detrimental these unnecessary fertilizers can be for the rest of the garden and surrounding ecosystem.

The rest of the book consists of sections on "Critical Thinking,” "Mulches,” "How/What/When/Where To Plant,” and "Miracles in a Bag/Bottle/Box.” The book is a compilation of website articles so the chapters are very short and can stand alone. It is an easy book to read cover-to-cover or to browse through to read about the topics that are of specific interest.

Just a warning: as a gardener, I love gardening books full of pictures of rich, lush gardens. I gorge myself on the myriad of colors, color combinations, and garden designs. So when I picked up The Informed Gardener and thumbed through it, I noticed immediately that it was severely lacking in photographs. But the amount of accessible information and, more importantly, the undoing of misinformation, put this book at the very top of my gardening reading list. This book will save you time, money, and heartache and make your garden a healthier place.

Elaina Jorgensen is a doctoral student at the University of Washington School of Oceanography.


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