Foodist: Cookbook Reviews

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Gardener's Desk Reference

By Janet Marinelli, general editor

Don't plan on getting a lot accomplished for the first week or so this book is in your house. It may be a reference, but it behaves like a sponge, sucking up any and all attention you happen to cast it's way.

Take, for example, the chapter called Botany for Gardeners. High school biology was never this interesting. The chapter on Plant Conservation, which includes sections on plant diversity as well as vanishing plants, is frightening. Ever think you would be frightened by a gardening text?

Reference, however, is the key word here. For this is a reference, and not a final word (should such a thing even exist). With chapters devoted to natural gardening, kitchen gardening, ornamental gardening, indoor and city gardening, and safe pest control, this monster-size book (and undertaking) -- over 800 pages -- is the place to come for an immediate key into the kind of information that's relevant to just about any questions aimed at gardening and plants. It's the desk version of Think Globally, Act Locally in that it's the place to start, and gives a fairly good idea of where to go to flesh out any information.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden couldn't be a better place to launch such a project as the Gardener's Desk Reference. It has been a pioneer in gardening publications for this entire century, and the nation of gardeners owes it a sincere debt.

One regret: The short shrift given mushrooms. Their only appearance is among poisonous plants. One can safely expect much, much more of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden than this kind of arrogant backhand to the chops.

Schuyler Ingle ...