Is it really spring?
By Sudie Blanchard
Assistant Director
YORK VILLAGE - The vernal equinox has come and gone and an early beginning to daylight savings time is stretching our days.
This must mean that spring is here. And with spring comes thoughts of gardens and gardening.
The York Public Library can help gardeners of all sorts. Thanks to the generosity of local garden clubs, our gardening collection includes a wide variety of resources for gardeners.
Here are a few gardening books of note.
New in our reference collection is "The Oxford Companion to the Garden." The 1,750 entries in this beautifully illustrated volume offer information about gardens worldwide, gardeners of note and horticultural details in general.
Another book in the reference section, "The Ultimate Book of Gardening," puts lots of practical information all in one hefty volume. It has sections on small gardens, container gardening, garden design and a section of "gardening through the year."
Our gardening sections - found mostly at Dewey numbers 635.9 and 712 - contain hundreds of books covering everything from annuals to wildflowers. Here's a small sample.
"Seascape Gardening" by Anne Halpin is valuable to gardeners in a coastal area like ours. It presents an overview of the geology and geography of the Atlantic coast from Maine to South Carolina and discusses the particular challenges of seaside gardening -wind, salt, flooding, sand and sun. One of the gardens profiled in the volume is located right here in York!
Diana Grenfell's "The Color Encyclopedia of Hostas" was given in memory of a local gardener. This valuable resource provides full descriptions and color photographs for more than 750 plants. Informative sections on hosta classification and botany, gardening ideas, advice on pests and diseases and a quick-reference list of the best hostas for different purposes add depth to this comprehensive review of this popular plant.
And for those of us born without a "green thumb" we offer "Gardening All-in-One for Dummies." This one will keep you smiling, while providing simple and useful information for beginning and struggling gardeners everywhere.
Happy growing!
