Product Description

Herbs sets a new standard of excellence for illustrated gardening books. Turid Forsyth's photographs and watercolor illustrations capture all the beauty and detail of these fascinating and practical plants. Patrick Lima's highly readable and entertaining text, chock-full of helpful advice and wry anecdotal observations, packs the maximum amount of information in the most accessible and enjoyable form.

Chapters are devoted to: Selecting and Growing Herbs, Soil, Perennial Kitchen Herbs, Thyme, Alliums, Herbs to Blend and Brew, Herbs for Fragrance, Growing Herbs Indoors, Cooking with Fresh Herbs and Gathering Wild Herbs. A chapter is devoted to herbs with seeds such as caraway, chives, coriander, cress, mustard and poppy and another to sages for seasoning and teas as well as for adding color to the flowerbed.

This volume, as beautiful as it is useful, combines the wisdom of two longtime gardeners to make Herbs, The Complete Gardener's Guide, a delightful and essential addition to any gardener's library.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #444726 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.ca
Herbs: The Complete Gardener's Guide is not just for gardeners. This book will appeal to many readers who use herbs in the intertwining pastimes of cooking, brewing, folk medicine, and home-based crafts. Author Patrick Lima is a lively writer, and his passion for the simple pleasures associated with growing herbs is evident on every page. He describes picking fresh leaves for the kitchen, making a pot of fragrant tea, travelling down memory lane on a whiff of costmary or rue, and tousling the lavender in order to breathe in its calming scent.

Herbs is less a quick reference than an excuse to linger over a cup of mint tea while savouring tales of tending herbs at Larkwhistle--the author's rural western Ontario garden--along with anecdotes about his grandmother, neighbours, and friends. "In the fall, we often hang herb bundles from a dowel suspended above the woodstove, where the rising heat crisps them perfectly in three days. A neighbour hangs herbs from the rafters of her unfinished attic. A barn, garden, shed or shady screened porch is also a good drying space." The photographs by Turid Forsyth are superb, and recipes for simple dishes, teas, and potpourris mean the herbal harvest need never go unused. --Carolyn Leitch

From Publishers Weekly
Leafy, flowering vines and kitchen herbs, seeds, pods, bulbs and all things herbal are showcased in this expansive study. Lima (The Art of Perennial Gardening) and Forsyth focus on the plants' physical characteristics rather than on cultivation: how they look, smell, feel and taste, what makes them thrive, which parts make the best food or medicine. With some basic but not comprehensive know-how ("This 3-foot North American herb [anise-hyssop] wants a place in the middle of a bed of tea herbs or perennials"), the book offers facts and aesthetic appreciation, and as such will primarily benefit cognoscenti. A handful of recipes and hundreds of photos enhance this charming book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Paper Clips, September 2001
Filled with delightful vignettes and essential advice ... lavishly illustrated.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful & inspiring
"I want to plant a herb garden!"
That's how I felt after reading this book!

I learnt that herbs are beautiful, useful & so colorful, yet they are easy to grow.
The book shows many pictures so you know how the herbs look & how to arrange them. It also introduces other herbs that you may have forgotten about. The book chapters make it easy & helpful to look through, chapters such as: herbs that seed, salads, tea, silver colored herbs, flowering, scented etc.

At the end there are tips on planting, freezing & drying. Also a few herb recipes that look delicious, but I haven't tried them yet.
All in all a beautiful book to look at