Container Gardener's Handbook

Container gardening is popular for its convenience, flexibility, and design potential. This guide to growing in containers features large color photos that provide inspiration as readers learn about techniques and plant varieties. Many types of containers are profiled, with tips and details about which plants go well in which settings. One chapter outlines the process of planting in a container with a balanced focus on both form and function. Forty projects with a definite emphasis on upcycling range from creating a planter out of a pallet or using a colander as a hanging basket to creating a living wall or a mini water feature in a metal trough. These Pinterest-ready projects, which range in difficulty and time required, each include a list of tools and materials, along with usually fewer than a dozen steps. A final chapter addresses maintenance, including watering, pruning, and repotting. Avid watchers of British garden TV shows may recognize engaging presenter and now author Tophill, whose conversational style translates well from the screen to the page. -- Anne Heidemann

Publisher's Weekly: For plant lovers hampered by equally constrained budgets and living spaces, this lively offering from horticulturist Tophill, host of the BBC show Gardener's World, will be a boon. Combining economy, creativity, and plant knowledge, this practical guide highlights varied projects that enable even the most space-limited garden enthusiast to explore new possibilities in otherwise neglected nooks and crannies. A feature of the book's approach is the concept of "upcycling"--recycling well-worn cast-offs (such as old boots, suitcases, and even tires) and transforming them into accent pieces that serve as colorful decorative flourishes and showcase the willingness of plants to grow just about anywhere. "There is a knack to achieving the perfect container," Tophill notes, and her book abounds with help for realizing it. From choosing the type of container (a trough? a painted pot? glass? round? square? large? small?) to deciding on the number of containers to use in a given spot and determining where to place them, how to maintain them, and (when needed) how to transplant them, this creative, smart, and hopeful guide offers everything anyone needs to create a colorful and long-lasting container garden.

Whether you have space for a grouping of large pots or only a bare patch of exterior wall for a hanging container, the authors show -- and tell and inspire -- how to succeed at this small-scale yet satisfying approach. --The Columbus Dispatch

With "Container Gardener's Handbook: Pots, Techniques, and Projects to Transform Any Space" anyone can add some greenery to their life as UK-based horticulturalist, television presenter, and the author of "First-time Gardener" Frances Tiphill shows how to use overlooked pots to their full potential and transform any garden -- whether it's a modest balcony, a small square of patio, or just a windowsill. "Container Gardener's Handbook" covers a range of different planting schemes and types of container, from urns and troughs to chimney stacks and hanging baskets. Featuring expert advice here on what to grow, from bonsais, bulbs and bamboos to tumbling and creeping plants and flowers, aspiring gardeners will learn how to make a living wall, a pond in a metal trough, or even their own homemade containers. "Container Gardener's Handbook" includes: 41 inspired projects for creative and sustainable container gardens; How to use containers to bring nature to the most inhospitable and smallest of spaces; Choosing the right size, shape and materials for containers; How to pair plants and pots, upcycle existing items, and create personal containers; Advice on drainage, compost, additives, fertilizers, mulch, feeding, watering, deadheading, and more. With its creative ideas and step-by-step instructions illustrated throughout with bright and informative photography, "Container Gardener's Handbook" is especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Gardening instructional reference collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "Container Gardener's Handbook" is also available in a digital book format. Midwest Book Review