Esther Coombs

This is a book about growing relatively simple home gardens as a family (or potentially as a volunteer project for a school/community group). It focuses primarily on fruits and vegetables, but a few flowers are included as well.

This is an odd book to classify. It's slim like a picture book and full of colorful illustrations (NOT photographs). My library and several others have it in their children's collection. However, the author is clearly writing to the parent/adult, with statements to the effect of 'you can do this with your child' or 'young children will especially love this activity.' There's also a questionable reference to Russian roulette right in the introduction.

That being said, the actual content of the book is informative, breaking down gardening life by the seasons and what you can do during each (e.g., planting in spring, harvesting in fall, etc.). The information, however, seems kind of basic. There's nothing too earth-shattering here. The suggestions are not bad -- such as using companion planting, netting, etc. -- but it is probably things you already knew if you've done any amount of gardening in the past.

The activities described are mostly re-use/re-purpose ideas, which are neat but I'm guessing if someone got as far along as buying/checking out a book on gardening, there's a good chance they already have a watering can and don't need to make one out of an empty milk jug. Other activities are painfully obvious, i.e., a suggestion to carve a pumpkin around Halloween. Pressing flowers and painting leaves are among the more artistic ideas.

All in all, I didn't find this book terribly helpful or interesting to read and it feels like it doesn't really know who its target audience should be (i.e., children or adults). That being said, if you are truly an absolute beginner at gardening, this might be a helpful jumping off place. But you will need more detailed information to actually become adept at gardening so this cannot be your last stop.… (meer)