I’m not a master gardener.  Not like I don’t work at my version of gardening every week! I was beyond fortunate that my neighbor down the street in Washington state had the greenest thumb among all of us. She was very curious about what I was doing in my yard.

It never occurred to me that I was putting plants next to each other that had totally different watering needs.  Or I put a plant that would grow too large in a little space.  I thought you put a plant in the ground and it grew, right? What was sold at the local nursery must be perfect for that environment. Oh my!

My co-author, Connie Eden, was a very patient plant teacher, opening up my gardening ignorance. I had so many questions, we ended up putting the answers into our gardening book.

The basics aren’t taught

Turns out, gardening isn’t actually a natural activity although we work with plants. Say, what? Let’s explain how it works (or doesn’t, as the case may be). We manipulate plants that normally wouldn’t grow together to make a garden. We try to make them “fit,” expecting them to survive where Mother Nature wouldn’t put them. Gardening is a human activity, that somehow you’re just supposed to know how to do. 

Although written two decades ago, the basic gardening principles inside the book remain evergreen.  While it’s great for beginners, it was really written for me and the wide swath of “gardeners” who have been trying to make a nice yard for years — but keep failing. If you wonder why things aren’t working, then The Pitiful Gardener’s Handbook is for you.

And BTW, I illustrated the book, too. 

Let me make it personal

Lucky for you, you don’t have to remain pitiful since you can get an autographed book PLUS Free shipping. I couldn’t do that with Amazon! But here’s the thing: unfortunately, these last copies have damaged covers.  Don’t know if they were packed slightly damp or stored inproperly. But they stick together when pulled out of the carton. I’ve included a close-up. The book itself — and its gardening advice — is solid. One would hope the cover would get dirty anyway from being handled frequently to answer all your gardening questions. 

So, I’ll pay for the shipping. And you can tell me what you’d like the personalized version to say when I sign it for you or a friend.

How do you know these concepts work?

I’ve put the theories to the test in less than ideal gardening environments. I first learned to improve my gardening in verdant NW Washington where everything grew well. But then we moved to yards in the glacial soil of the Sierra Mountains near Yosemite, urban/northern California, parched/rocky southern California, the rain-saturated clay of Houston. Each environment posed such different challenges, yet the underlying gardening principles remained the same. You must put the right plant in its right place for it to thrive. Sounds like good advice for people, too!