By Joel M. Lerner
Saturday, December 1, 2007

Nothing beats curling up with a book in your favorite chair, except maybe being in front of a fireplace, too. Here are my book picks for this year's holiday shopping list:

-- "Venetian Gardens," a 175-page, hardcover reference book written by Mariagrazia Dammicco and photographed by Marianne Majerus, delivers captivating impressions of back yards, entries and street scenes in Venice, including architecture and ornamental horticulture in this city of more than 500 secret gardens and 118 islands connected by 410 bridges. (Flammarion, $45)

-- "The Garden at Night: Private Views of Public Edens," a 176-page, hardcover coffee-table tome photographed by Linda Rutenberg, captures scenes at public gardens at times few people experience them -- at night. Plants are lit, focusing on foliage, flowers or architectural elements in a way you are not used to seeing them at 20 public gardens, including Longwood, Chicago Botanic, Descanso, Fairchild Tropical Botanic and Huntington Botanical. (Chronicle Books, $40)

-- Brooklyn Botanic Garden's gardening series released three handbooks in 2007. They are "Wildflower Gardens," #159; "Hummingbird Gardens," #163; and "Buried Treasures: Tasty Tubers of the World," #188. BBG has published handbooks for more than 60 years. These paperbacks are about 100 pages with many high-quality, full-color photographs and illustrations. Great stocking stuffers. Cost: $9.95 each.

"Wildflower Gardens" is a collection of three- to five-page essays by well-known garden writers. Designing in sun, partial shade and shade are covered. Various types of wildflower gardens are discussed, including borders, beds, bogs, meadows, prairies and rockeries, and 60 wildflowers are identified with instructions for care and planting.

"Hummingbird Gardens," primarily written by Stephen W. Kress, vice president for bird conservation at the National Audubon Society, also includes essays by experts with experience from other parts of the country.

"Buried Treasures: Tasty Tubers of the World" is about root crops you might never have considered eating. Some of the nut-size tubers are not only tasty but are also a way to control weeds, such as nutsedge, and to grow food crops almost year-round. This is a complete collection of information from experts about edible roots, from the common to the obscure.

-- "Create Your Own Japanese Garden: A Practical Guide," by Motomi Oguchi, describes various Japanese garden styles and explains how to create them in large and small spaces for residential or commercial sites. Ideas include entry, rear and courtyard gardens. Themes include a sukiya-style house and environment, woodland retreat, indoor stream, tea garden, and terrace garden. Oguchi provides tips on the relationships between house and garden, maintaining or restoring spaces as necessary, pruning, mowing, watering, repairing hardscape, and many more crucial management tasks. This 128-page book is loaded with design ideas from East and West. (Kodansha, $29.95)

-- "Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way," by Jake Hobson, explains how to prune a tree to make it look like a trained tree. Hobson fairly accurately describes niwaki in Western terms as "big bonsai." The major difference is that bonsai is grown in a pot and miniaturized and niwaki is a full-size tree planted in the ground. Both pruning practices are employed to create the most attractive tree possible. A specialized vocabulary describes branching habits and pruning techniques. This 144-page study is a good book to start your understanding of this ancient practice. (Timber Press, $34.95)

-- "The Magic of Monet's Garden: His Planting Plans and Color Harmonies," by Derek Fell, offers a window into the mind of one of the great impressionist painters of the 19th and 20th centuries and one of the most gifted flower gardeners of the 20th century. Monet is credited with inventing impressionism, which defined a breaking away from photographic realism in painting to what the artist saw, felt and could capture in the atmospheric conditions of the space. He became known for creating a shimmering sensation in his paintings. A subject was floral design, and it was masterfully reproduced from his gardens to his canvas. At first, Monet gardened to reproduce specimens as still life. Then he discerned how colors could be manipulated outdoors, and he began to paint his favorite subjects in both indoor and outdoor motifs. This hardcover book has 160 pages. (Firefly Books, $35)

-- "Success With Shade-Loving Plants," by Graham Clarke, is for people who want to ameliorate heavy shade, find flora that will grow in the low light of a woodland garden or thrive on the north side of a house. This beautifully photographed paperback shows plants that will bring year-round color to a woodland garden. Clarke covers more than 100 shade-tolerant plants. The 160 pages and more than 200 color photographs and illustrations contain suggestions you might never have thought to try. His suggestions are colored by his residence and gardening in England and reflect a European plant palette. Several are favorites of mine: golden hakone grass ( Hakonechloa macra "Aureola") with yellow leaves that look as if the sun is shining on them; false forget-me-not ( Brunnera macrophylla) with large, year-round leathery foliage and blue flowers in spring; and Arum ( A. italicum "Pictum") with white veins on deep green leaves in shade. (Guild of Master Craftsman Publications, $14.95)

-- "Pots in the Garden," by Ray Rogers, is a veritable library of container plantings that teaches landscape design techniques with pots, using plants of all types. Houseplants can serve as outdoor plants for seven to eight months and be brought indoors to winter. Rogers offers lists of bulbs, shrubs, trees and vines. The ideas are illustrated with 240 full-color photographs. He begins with the principles of color combinations in fully designed settings.

The how-to aspects of planting and choosing pots are given, but understanding design is his first lesson before one plant is planted or one container purchased. This is what I enjoyed most about this 248-page hardcover: learning how to put a garden together comes before doing it. Line, harmony, color, contrast, and pot colors and plantings all precede buying and planting. Winter is the perfect time to plan your container accents for spring. This work will excite you and inspire you to try some of his innovative ideas. (Timber Press, $29.95)

Joel M. Lerner is president of Environmental Design in Capitol View Park, Md. E-mail or contact him through his Web site, http://www.gardenlerner.com.