Buy Gardener Gifts

BOOKS: The latest edition of The Sunset Western Garden Book, unveiled earlier this year, will please savvy gardeners on your holiday gift list. Or complete their reference shelf with the Western Garden Book of Edibles and Edible Garden Cookbook, both also from Sunset. Organic gardeners will love the month-by-month advice in Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening while crafters will enjoy The Revolutionary Yardscape by Matthew Levesque or Handmade Garden Projects by Lorene Edwards Forkner. Native plant fans will welcome California Native Plants for the Garden written by a trio of experts for Cachuma Press. They’ll also appreciate California Native Gardening, a month-by-month gardening guide for native plant gardens by Santa Clara University professor Helen Popper. In addition to monthly tasks, the paperback book helps with native garden know-how and design. It’s available at the University of California Press website. There’s also a new native plant guide you can pre-order for your gardening friends titled, The California Native Landscape. Authored by San Diego’s Greg Rubin and Lucy Warren its due early next year from Timber Press.

SEEDS: Through the end of the year, the Water Conservation Garden benefits from any online seed order placed with Renee’s Garden. Just enter the code FB737B and the garden on the campus of Cuyamaca College in El Cajon will receive 25 percent of the order’s cost. Based in California, Renee’s Garden offers a wide variety of seeds for cottage-garden favorites, edibles and herbs. For holiday giving, take advantage of themed collections including “Hummingbirds and Butterflies,” “Gourmet Salad Garden” or “Basil Lover’s Bonanza” as well as scatter garden canisters with enough poppy and wildflower seeds for a 700-square-foot field or bank. 

Garden Planner: By Mary James