My 20th book is available!
The Scentual Garden: Exploring the World of Botanical Fragrance
Joe Lamp’l, Emmy Award-winning Creator & Host: Growing a Greener World on national public television and Founder: joegardener.com shares his impressions of the new book:
“While I admit to being a big fan of any book by Ken Druse, to my pleasant surprise, I was drawn quickly and deeply into The Scentual Garden. It’s a brilliant and fascinating journey into the most overlooked and under-appreciated dimension of plants. Ken’s well-researched information, experience and perfect examples, now has me appreciating plants, gardens, and designs in a fresh and stimulating way.”
About the book!
In The Scentual Garden, I reveal a world of sensory experience to surprise and delight every gardener. This wholly original survey of botanical fragrance—how to sample it, design for it, revel in it, and even capture it—offers detailed descriptions of the scents of 100s of vividly illustrated perennial flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees.
Chapters discuss how and why plants produce fragrances, how our sense of smell works, how perfumers capture floral scents, how plants “communicate” with each other, and even how to smell plants (here, the advice is similar to techniques for tasting wine). There are suggestions for bringing fragrance into gardens, from making paths that offer a sequence of sensory experiences to night gardens that come alive with fragrance.
As in a previous book, Natural Companions, photographer Ellen Hoverkamp contributes vivid and artful botanical photographs, made using a scanner, of flowers and plants discussed in the text. These are accompanied by my garden photographs to create a book that is as beautiful to look at as it is informative and evocative to read.
I published my first large-format illustrated book, The Natural Garden, way back in 1980. That book is out of print, but you may be able to find it along with most of my other 20 works online. Four of these works are still selling and easier to find. Those include the soft-cover reprint of Making More Plants, The Collector’s Garden, Natural Companions: The Garden Lovers Guide to Plant Combinations and The New Shade Garden, which is not a reprint of my bestseller, The Natural Shade Garden, which went into 12 printings. The New Shade Garden is a completely reimagined work that suggests the best way to garden in the age of climate change may be to get out of the sun.
MORE OF MY BOOKS:
The New Shade Garden: Creating A Lush Oasis In The Age of Climate Change
Ken plumbs the depths of shade once again–20 years after the publication of his bestseller, The Natural Shade Garden. This time, it’s to tackle the challenges that have arisen due to our changing climate. The low-stress environment of shade (cooler temperatures, fewer water demands, carbon sequestration) is extremely beneficial for our plants, our planet, and us. Ken details new ways of looking at all aspects of the gardening process, in topics such as designing your garden, choosing and planting trees, soil conservation, critter issues, and discovering the vast array of flowers and foliage–all within the trials of a warming planet, shrinking resources, and new weather patterns.
Ken knows that the best defense is to create a verdant retreat. He says, “The garden of the future will be in the shade.”
Natural Companions: The Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations
Ken presents recipes for perfect plant pairings using diverse species that look great together and bloom at the same time. Organized by theme within seasons, topics include color, fragrance, foliage, grasses, edible flowers and much more, all presented in photographs of gardens that show planted combinations from a wide variety of climates and conditions. Natural Companions also features more than one hundred special botanical images of amazing depth and color created in collaboration with artist Ellen Hoverkamp using modern digital technology.
Filled with an incredible amount of horticultural guidance, useful plant recommendations, and gardening lore—all written in Druse’s charming, witty style—this book is a must-have for gardeners and lovers of plants and flowers.
Recipient of gold and silver medals from GWA The Association of Garden Communicators
Click here for a slide show of Ellen’s scans from the book.
Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of Propagation
For people who love gardens, propagation—the practice of growing whatever you want, whenever you want—is gardening itself. In this paperback reissue of the successful book Making More Plants, Ken Druse, one of America’s foremost gardening authorities, presents innovative, practical techniques for expanding any plant collection, along with more than 700 photographs. Based on years of personal research, this is a practical manual as well as a beautiful garden book, presenting procedures he has tested and adapted, as well as photographed step by step. Winner of Award of the Year form the Garden Writers Association.
CHECK OUT Margaret Roach’s podcast with me on division with a couple of video demonstrations.
An Amazon.com review by Jill Lightner:
“Generally, a gardening book that teaches practical skills is designed to look more like a plain textbook than an artful coffee-table decoration, but Ken Druse (The Natural Garden, The Collector’s Garden) has changed that with his gorgeous book Making More Plants. An invitation to examine the miracle of birth in the botanical world is at the center of this book, and you’ll be amazed and delighted as Druse’s photos and text bring this astonishing world to life.
Filling these pages are close-up photos of plants at every stage of life and in every variety–pinecones, dried seed pods, root and stem cuttings, ripe fruits, and lush flowers show off their unique shapes and colors everywhere you look. Specific techniques are outlined with both photos and text; from the spore prints of ferns to the nicking of hard-shelled seeds, you’ll learn exactly how to tackle every aspect of creating new plants. Careful attention is paid in the text to the timing of taking different types of cuttings from different plants, and these practical details will hopefully help curb any urgent desire to play Johnny Appleseed with your favorite wildflowers until the season is exactly right. Special projects like hardwood cutting and involving children in plant propagation have small sections devoted to them; the African violet project for youngsters is a fascinating introduction, and only slightly more involved than that old carrot-top-in-a-dish-of-water project. For serious gardeners who enjoy plants for more than their pretty flowers and attractive shapes, this combination of science and beauty will supply both inspiration and information.”
BOOKS BY KEN
