Pacific Northwest
March, 2004
Regional Report
Books
Organic Gardening for the 21st Century
Written by John Fedore, Organic Gardening for the 21st Century: A Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Flowers (Reader's Digest Association, 2000; $30) is a guide to creating a natural, nourishing, and attractive home garden. Topics covered include sustainability, green manures, heirloom varieties, edible landscaping, and preserving fresh produce and herbs. It contains an abundance of illustrations and full-color photographs, and deftly explains, in easy-to-understand language, all about growing and harvesting over 250 varieties of vegetables, fruits, and herbs. It's a great reference for any gardener's bookshelf.
Favorite or New Plant
Cerastium tomentosum
If you have a sunny space and want to fill it with the whitest of flowers, plant snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum). Its narrow leaves on low-growing stems form a tight mat, and in May and June starry white flowers appear.
Snow-in-summer needs room to perform. A single plant can spread to become a carpet 3 feet wide in almost any soil. I plant it in bold drifts at the corner of my property where I can admire it from any vantage point in the garden.
