Reviewed by Martha Artyomenko
About the book:
A beautifully photographed, gift-worthy guide to growing, harvesting, and utilizing 47 unexpected garden plants to make organic pantry staples, fragrances, floral arrangements, beverages, cocktails, beauty products, bridal gifts, and more.
Every garden–not just vegetable plots–can produce a bountiful harvest! This practical, inspirational, and seasonal guide will help make any garden more productive and enjoyable with a variety of projects using unexpected and often common garden plants, some of which may already be growing in your backyard.
Discover the surprising usefulness of petals and leaves, roots, seeds, and fruit: turn tumeric root into a natural dye and calamintha into lip balm. Make anise hyssop into a refreshing iced tea and turn apricots into a facial mask. Crabapple branches can be used to create stunning floral arrangements, oregano flowers to infuse vinegar, and edible chrysanthemum to liven up a salad. With the remarkable, multi-purpose plants in Harvest, there is always something for gardeners to harvest from one growing season to the next.
My Review:
This book is one of those books you will want to have on your coffee table for people to page through. It is filled with gorgeous photography. Not only that, but the useful information for those of you looking for uses for common plants, herbs or unusual garden plants.
I did find that some of the zoning seemed to be off on what plants grow where, but it did instruct you to refer to a updated zoning chart with an online link in the back. I was wishing for a zone map to be included, but they skipped that.
There were multiple recipes for alcoholic drinks, herbal oils, and some other recipes, but mostly, this is just a lovely book of amazing pictures, with some minor ideas of how to use the plants. Most of the plants mentioned only grow in zones 6 and up, so if you are a colder weather, northern dweller, know that some of the plants do grow here that they mentioned, but they do not mention your zone.
I did, very much enjoy this book and passed it along to a friend to look at in the final stages of her pregnancy. I am looking forward to making the lilac cream, some of the oils and lip balm mentioned in here.
This book was given to me for review by Blogging for Books. The opinions contained herein are my own.
It is available for purchase and would make an excellent gift for any gardener.
“Harvest” It comes in a lovely hardcover volume.
