I found this great light read recently on everything pond related, and made sure to add it to my gardening shelf! This hard-cover book, An Essential Guide to Choosing Your Pond Fish and Aquatic Plants, is 80 glossy pages of photos and tips guaranteed to help you build and run a successful pond or water feature, and take your water gardening skills to the next level buy introducing you to a wider variety of fish and plant life to build a dynamic backyard ecosystem!

Covering topics ranging from water feature creation, plant selection, fish varieties, and DIY tips for the weekend water gardener, this book is thorough and written simply and concisely. The format is easy to read, but with an information pool of a much larger book. The chapters are broken down by topic, and each point is illustrated thoroughly through detailed photographs and step by step instructions, or one sentence tips in the photo margins. The basic pond topics are expanded to provide new information for every level of water gardener, while not overwhelming the novice. The writing and visual style of this book is unique, as it alternates between classic paragraph style and and almost scrapbook feel on pages heavier in photography, with tips and pointers artistically arranged around diagrams and pictures.

This book is a great resource for every water gardener, and one that I recommend for the home library for quick topical searches. I particularly appreciated the full page spreads dedicated to the needs and habits of pond fish varieties, and the section on pond and bog plants that included many native plants unmentioned in other pond resources I have read! Check it out today at your local library or on amazon, and create a beautiful water feature around your home or apartment.

When people ask me what my favorite gardening book is, this is always the first book that comes to mind!  Whether I am working in my own yard, or helping a friend with theirs, this is my favorite “first line of defense” book for handling basic gardening questions, and this is always the first book I loan out to people.  I recommend this book to any gardener, green or black thumbed, since it is so easy to read, has brilliant illustrations, and photography, and it covers all the major topics of concern for the urban, or city gardener. From tool selection, pruning, and propagation, to pest identification, and pond building, this book covers all the common home and garden topics under the direction of various authors who specialize in each field of discussion. A hefty paperback book of six hundred pages, this is no afternoon read, but the organization of the chapters makes any topic you need to research a breeze to find.  The Better Homes and Gardens New Garden Book is a also a valuable encyclopedia of annuals, and perennials, with detailed descriptions and photographs of thousands of individual plants.

This book ambitiously “throws the net wide” in an attempt to meet the common gardener where they are at, and succeeds in providing a valuable teaching tool, garden encyclopedia, and beautiful coffee table book, that I am proud to share with my friends and family.  You’re bound to find new inspiration, and new ideas for your hobby or vegetable garden with this book!

If you’d like your own copy, click here for new and used copies at Amazon.com.

Your thoughts: Do you have a favorite gardening reference that you recommend to others?