Product Description

Gardening is now the favorite leisure pastime in America. Homeowners are realizing the health benefits derived from gardening and the increase in their home's property value.

Book retailers are well aware that the trend in gardening books is to regional titles that provide credible information on the plants that perform well in specific regions.

California's Gardener's Guide is written by the highly popular gardening experts Bruce and Sharon Asakawa.

Contains easy to use advice on the top landscape plant choices (more than 160 entries) for California. Recommends specific varieties and provides advice on how to plant, how to grow and how to care for California's best plants.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #674229 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-03
• Released on: 2001-09-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Publisher
Bruce Asakawa, “The Voice of California Gardening” for 25 years, reaches 1.2 million listeners twice a week across 18 California markets! Now, he has written a gardening book exclusively for ALL California gardeners, featuring 165 premium plants for the Golden State. Each plant entry has a large corresponding color photo. Its 423 pages cover annuals, perennials, berries, trees, houseplants, groundcovers, roses and more. Bruce and Sharon also offer valuable plant-by-plant advice on planting, fertilizing, care and pest control and share recommended cultivars for personalizing your California landscape. Good Growing. It starts here!

From the Author
We have accumulated so much information over the years that we wanted to document it. In our book, we share hands-on techniques from our worldwide experiences to help the gardens of both new and native Californians thrive.

~Bruce Asakawa

About the Author
In their first literary collaboration, Bruce and Sharon Asakawa complile their years of horticulture experience and media presence into the California Gardener’s Guide.

Bruce is the highly regarded host of “The West Coast Garden Line, ” reaching over one million gardeners across 19 markets every Saturday and Sunday through his weekly radio program, “The West Coast Garden Line" from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Bruce graduated with a landscape architecture degree from Cal Poly, Pomona. He later developed and taught a horticultural orientation course for the University of California, San Diego Extension Program; contributed to the California Association of Nurserymen’s statewide training manual; served on the Governor-appointed Urban Forest Advisory Council, and owned and managed Presidio Garden Center. Today, Bruce is a highly recognized landscape architect and gardening consultant. Sharon has been Bruce’s partner in life and in horticulture since 1963. Her years of experience as florist department manager in their garden center gave Sharon a “hands-on” gardening expertise in knowing the public’s major gardening concerns. With her practical plant knowledge and keen organizational skills, Sharon is the ideal co-host and producer for Bruce’s radio and webcast programs. She also enjoys planning the Askakawa’s twice-a year garden tours.

Customer Reviews

Not for all
A well written and illustrated guide to the 165 or so plants that grow well in the author's portion of California. The book must be faulted for not including plants that grow well and provide color in the arid and desert regions of the state. Certainly water wise gardening should be included. No mention is made of the use of California native plants in the garden. A beginning gardener will be better served by Sunset's WESTERN GARDEN BOOK. Those who will admit to living in an arid region (this includes Los Angeles) will find Eric Johnson's JOHNSON'S GUIDE TO GARDENING: PLANTS FOR THE ARID WEST of great value for its coverage of native plants. Desert gardeners will need the Coachella Valley Water District's LUSH & EFFICIENT: GARDENING IN THE COACHELLA VALLEY as their guide to effective desert gardening.

Nice companion book
This book is ok because it has nice pictures and stories. I do like it because it has a "when to plant" reference as well as sun exposure, bloom time and color and other useful information. I'm a Northern California gardner and found this book to be somewhat specific to Southern California in plant selection, although they do show, for each plant, a map of Caifornia where each plant would grow. I found Northern California Gardening: A Month-By-Month Guide by Katherine Grace Endicott a great book and of course Sunset's Western Garden book.

Nice supplement (though not essential)
I agree with the other reviewers that Sunset's Western Garden Guide is the essential book. My only complaint with that book is while it is quite extensive, the small illustrated drawings are not always ideal for identifying unknown plants and the depth is occasionally lacking. I bought this book (cheap at a booksale) because it focused on a smaller number of plants (admittedly oriented toward Southern California), had nice big photographs of each plant and went into a little bit more depth (fertilizer ratios to use, specific planting directions, soil ph numbers, etc.)