Essential Gardening Books for the Newcomer to Florida

I just moved to Florida and although my gardens in my new home are very well designed, they are too formal for my tastes and lack two essentials I adore. I need flowers in my garden and I also need birds and other wildlife coming to visit. In essence, my garden is sterile. Garden design is very much a matter of taste and style. My existing garden is easy to maintain. But I'd like to add a few more plants and move the existing plants around so that I have more color. To do this, I needed to know a great deal more about Florida planting zones and plants.

Here's my favorite gardening book finds for the Florida garden.

Best Florida Gardening Book for Native Plants

I picked the native plant gardening guide published by the University Press of Florida titled "A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants" by Rufino Osorio because I liked the pictures of plants and descriptions of their growing requirements. There's about 4 or five other books on the Florida native plants with variations in style and content.

Best Florida Gardening Advice Book

My real estate agent Joyce Singrossi gave me "Gardening in Florida" by Tom McCubbin as a house warming gift. "Gardening in Florida" is a terrific resource, laying out month by month tasks required to maintain your gardens including watering, fertilizing, planting, and identifying problems.

Best Florida Gardening Plant Picture Book

Sunset's "Florida Top Ten Garden Guide" by Robert E. Bowden and the editors of Sunset is a treasure trove of some of the most useful gardening plants for the Florida Garden. It contains ten pictures of palms, vines, trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, roses, bulbs, ground covers and fruit trees. It provides a chore list and some great examples for how to use them in your Florida garden.

Best General Gardening Plant Book for the Southeast Region of the US

The "Southeast Smart Garden Regional Guide" from the American Horticultural Society includes some plants good for Florida gardens. It is divided between woody and herbaceous plants and has a fantastic lists of websites and gardening contacts in the appendix. Florida gardeners need to pay attention to the plants listed to ensure they fit within the proper zone for their location.

Best Home Landscaping Book for the Southeast Region of the US

Southern gardens are styled differently, from my experience in the Northwest. The "Southeast Home Landscaping" book by Roger Holmes and Rita Buchanan is a general how to guide with a variety of landscaping solutions for garden situations and offers up several alternatives for the same area. Plants in the garden plans should be checked by Florida gardeners to determine if they will grow well in Florida.

Free Best Booklet from Florida's Water Management Office

Waterwise Florida Landscapes is small color pamphlet guide to local plants that are drought tolerant and take less water to maintain than St. Augustine grass. The comments section next to each plant provides a wealth of information about the requirements to grow a healthy plant and some constraints caused by soil.

I like gardening books because they help me identify the best plants to use in my gardens and because all the lovely photographs help feed my creative imagination and plant the plants likely to grow well in my space.