Book Is A Gardener's Treasure Map
Ruah Donnelly's just-released The Adventurous Gardener: Where to Buy the Best Plants in New York and New Jersey (Horticultural Press, $25.95) is a guide to specialty growers of garden plants, divided by regions. (The section that includes Rochester-area nurseries, "Central and Western New York," also covers Buffalo, Syracuse and Ithaca. )
"Big boxes" need not apply. Donnelly hunts down the little guys: the backyard day lily breeder, the nut tree aficionado, the grower with a passion for orchids, bonsai, herbs, native wildflowers or Japanese maples.
Many of these nurseries are so small that they consist of just one employee, the owner, who often has a full-time job (or two) someplace else or is retired from a first career.
Donnelly's profiles include lots of details on the growers. (Full disclosure: I helped her with some of the research, but I don't profit in any way from the book.)
William Valvanis of the International Bonsai Arboretum in Henrietta, for example, got into bonsai "at age eleven, when his mother dragged him to a bonsai demonstration. ... By age 16, he was lecturing to garden clubs and had opened his own nursery."
No one who has visited GardenScape, Rochester's annual flower and garden show, could possibly have missed his outstanding displays in "Bonsai Alley," which take awards year after year. But how many of his fans know that Bill attracts students from all over the world or that he publishes a full-color, glossy magazine that is distributed in 52 countries?
The Adventurous Gardener also covers growers' current projects and future plans. I've known Ellen Folts, of the native wildflower nursery Amanda's Garden in Springwater, since 1997, but I never knew that she regularly sells native plants to New York City's Central Park until I read it here. Or that Jim Engel, whose White Oak Nursery in Canandaigua specializes in trees and shrubs, wants to change the way people landscape their homes by helping to reduce the cost of native plants, thereby encouraging their use.
At the beginning of each section is a handy map. At the end of each entry is a short paragraph on nearby attractions or another nursery that, while it didn't get a full write-up, is worth a visit. The Adventurous Gardener is like a little treasure map. Not only can you use it to explore the best that our area has to offer, but you'll undoubtedly form a list of must-visit nurseries all across New York and New Jersey.
If you're headed to New England anytime soon, pick up a copy of Donnelly's previous book, 2000's The Adventurous Gardener: Where to Buy the Best Plants in New England.
"Big boxes" need not apply. Donnelly hunts down the little guys: the backyard day lily breeder, the nut tree aficionado, the grower with a passion for orchids, bonsai, herbs, native wildflowers or Japanese maples.
Many of these nurseries are so small that they consist of just one employee, the owner, who often has a full-time job (or two) someplace else or is retired from a first career.
Donnelly's profiles include lots of details on the growers. (Full disclosure: I helped her with some of the research, but I don't profit in any way from the book.)
William Valvanis of the International Bonsai Arboretum in Henrietta, for example, got into bonsai "at age eleven, when his mother dragged him to a bonsai demonstration. ... By age 16, he was lecturing to garden clubs and had opened his own nursery."
No one who has visited GardenScape, Rochester's annual flower and garden show, could possibly have missed his outstanding displays in "Bonsai Alley," which take awards year after year. But how many of his fans know that Bill attracts students from all over the world or that he publishes a full-color, glossy magazine that is distributed in 52 countries?
The Adventurous Gardener also covers growers' current projects and future plans. I've known Ellen Folts, of the native wildflower nursery Amanda's Garden in Springwater, since 1997, but I never knew that she regularly sells native plants to New York City's Central Park until I read it here. Or that Jim Engel, whose White Oak Nursery in Canandaigua specializes in trees and shrubs, wants to change the way people landscape their homes by helping to reduce the cost of native plants, thereby encouraging their use.
At the beginning of each section is a handy map. At the end of each entry is a short paragraph on nearby attractions or another nursery that, while it didn't get a full write-up, is worth a visit. The Adventurous Gardener is like a little treasure map. Not only can you use it to explore the best that our area has to offer, but you'll undoubtedly form a list of must-visit nurseries all across New York and New Jersey.
If you're headed to New England anytime soon, pick up a copy of Donnelly's previous book, 2000's The Adventurous Gardener: Where to Buy the Best Plants in New England.
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posted by Davor Novakovic @ Saturday, May 14, 2005
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