About this Book

Region by region, Mary Dorra visits 24 gardeners from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Georgia, discovering vegetable gardens that are as dazzling to the eye as they are productive for the kitchen. Whether the innovations are garden designs - with towering beanpoles or in a patchwork-quilt pattern - or selection of vegetables, each garden offers a new way to look at an old-fashioned gardening tradition. The gardeners share their expert advice about how to grow prize-winning favorites and how to design a garden that integrates vegetables with flowering trees and shrubs, perennials, annuals, and herbs. More than 250 full-color photographs illustrate the ant's-eye view of the cabbage as well as the eagle's view of the entire garden, resources direct gardeners to the best seed catalogs (including sources for American heirloom seeds), nurseries, and reference books; tips from the gardeners provide general cultivation basics; and a selection of garden plans offers ideas on design.