Karen Kenny

A little book about growing herbs. It's pretty brief. That was my main problem with it: a lot of the information seemed incomplete or just not detailed enough for me. The history on herb uses in the beginning didn't really teach me anything at all. The growing information: how to start seeds, propagate from cuttings or dividing plants, etc. seemed solid enough, but it didn't always tell you which plants were most suitable for which methods (nor is this info available in the glossary). There's a little bit about garden layout and design, and scattered spotlights on certain plants throughout the book. Again, the level of information here is spotty. Some plants it tells you their uses- medicinal, cooking, attracting/deterring insects in the garden, etc.- but others just get named and that's it. I wish there had been the same level of detail on all the plants. Even the illustration quality was uneven- some of the photos are just beautiful, one was badly pixelated! There are also hand-drawn and watercolor illustrations, nice enough but very plain- not enough descriptive detail. Most aren't labeled, so sometimes I didn't know what plant I was looking at. There's no proper index. It does have a glossary of herbs in the back, which is laid out in a kind of grid made of colored stripes (that was hard to read, too). All in all, it's a cute little book but a lot of the ways it was formatted and organized just bugged me. However, there are enough little nuggets of info I don't have elsewhere that I'm going to hold onto this book until I get a better, more comprehensive one about herbs.

from the Dogear Diary… (more)