I recently got Colleen Dieter’s “Let’s Care for Texas Plants” Zines. I love gardening books, but frequently finding information again can be a real struggle. Colleen has done a great job of creating 3 indexed volumes on plant care in Texas that are short and to the point. The first is about care for turf grass and trees. The second is common perennials. The third is common “other” plants like Agaves, Yuccas, and Roses.
She said she expects some of this to be controversial, but most of it lines up with my experience. Of course that makes sense. In a rather wild coincident we live in the same neighborhood a couple streets apart. We have the same street number and first word of addresses (think 123 Oak Ridge and 123 Oak Valley) so the mail person loves to give us each other’s mail. I’ve been walking over to return mail for years and admiring her yard, but somehow it took me years of reading her blog at Red Wheelbarrow to put two and two together.
I would recommend this for anyone growing plants in Texas. I’m also hoping other people start making zines like this.
I think I’m going to make and decorate a binder and put these inside. I’m going to add the City of Austin’s Grow Green guides and some well labeled tabs. It’ll be like a Better Homes and Gardens Garden Book, but actually relevant to my zone!
I highly recommend anyone who is trying to grow any plants outdoors in Texas buy this great resource. Pick it up over at Red Wheelbarrow:
Shop For Stuff — (redwheelbarrowplants.com)
I just wrote about Colleen’s zine too! It IS a great resource for gardeners here in Central Texas. That’s a good idea to make a binder with her zine and the Grow Green Guide.
So…what’s her garden like? It’s always fun to know what other gardeners are doing. 🙂