Flower arranging
“Simply Elegant Flowers With Michael George” by Michael George, written with Bob Shuman is a colorful guide to arranging flowers with style. The book helps readers create compositions using exotic stems, such as orchids, and commonly overlooked blooms, such as carnations.
North Light Books: $30, hardcover
Designer thinks spring
You can almost smell the soil when you open P. Allen Smith’s latest book, “Living in the Garden Home: Connecting the Seasons with Containers, Crafts, and Celebrations.”
Smith, a garden designer, television personality and author, leads readers through a typical year in his garden. This isn’t an all-inclusive gardening manual, but rather a compilation of Smith’s gardening tips for each season and projects for enhancing the garden and bringing the outdoors in.
Clarkson Potter/Publishers: $32.50.
Tough plants
Succulents are garden workhorses.
Adaptable and nearly fuss-free, they add exotic interest without demanding much in return. Rock gardening expert Gwen Moore Kelaidis thinks they deserve credit for that, so she’s evangelizing on their behalf in her new book, “Hardy Succulents.”
The book introduces readers to a variety of plants for different situations and hardiness zones and provides tips for propagating, planting and maintaining them.
Storey Publishing: $19.95 in paperback or $29.95 in hardcover.
New hope for plant killers
Brown thumbs, take heart. Pamela Crawford has a container-gardening book just for you.
Crawford’s “Easy Container Gardens” says it right there on the cover: It’s “for anyone who has ever killed a plant.” But more experienced gardeners — or those with more luck — are likely to pick up some pointers too.
Crawford makes container gardening as foolproof as possible by keeping her planting and care pointers simple and recommending plants that practically assure success. The easiest plants to grow successfully get blue ribbons; those that are just a bit less reliable but are still good choices get red ribbons.
Color Garden Publishing: $19.95 in softcover.
Tips help save time
Some gardeners have more appreciation for plants than time to care for them.
Those are the people Carolyn Hutchinson wants to reach with “Time-saving Gardener: Tips and Essential Tasks, Season by Season.”
Hutchinson lays out gardening projects according to the time of year they should be done, and prioritizes them with a rating system of exclamation points. She also estimates the time required, so gardeners can decide what they need to do and set aside the time to do it.
Firefly Books: $19.95 in paperback.
