Grasses by freelance gardening writer Nancy J. Ondra is a beautiful and practical guide to raising ornamental grasses in one's garden. Filled cover to cover with excellent color photographs by life-long gardener and gardening photographer Saxon Holt of aesthetic and splendid grasses, the profusely illustrated text presents the reader with a wide choice of colored grasses to best accentuate the beauty of one's garden and how to best select choice plants for wet, dry, hot, or shady sites. Highly recommended for personal and professional gardening, horticultural and landscaping reference collections, even non-gardeners will appreciate the dazzling, coffee-table book quality photography of this singularly elegant yet practical guide.

Don't let this book's small size and lack of photos fool you: it's full of valuable information and by far my favorite book on how to landscape with herbs. The growing and planting instructions are concise and easy to understand. This book is very user friendly; you don't have to search for the information you need. The author has organized everything very well so you can find what you need right away. The first part of the book has landscaping plans, ideas for theme gardens, growing tips, combination ideas and lots more! The rest of the book is an alphabetical listing of each herb and tells how to grow, how to plant, how to use, etc. If you want to landscape with herbs, there are some expensive hardcover books out there but you don't need them. This book does it all and is small enough to carry with you in the garden!

Allie isn't looking forward to her summer: her isolated Maine community offers few friends and her father has injured his back, so the family has to pitch in and start a new business to help out. When she meets a summer girl whose family is staying at an elegant home they inherited, she forms an uncertain friendship with a girl who has everything monetarily, but lacks family support. Their friendship will change both their worlds in this moving story of conflict and discovery.

When I first moved into my new house (it was my first house) I read several books on garden design that would give me some kind of orientation about what to do with my back yard. It was a mess. Ms. William's book stood out (and still does) as the book that was most helpful and inspiring at the same time. It is beautifully written and well organized, and takes you through all aspects and stages of garden design, from principle to execution. Threaded throughout the book is a philosophy of restraint that I have learned is so important for the garden or any other designer who aims at the achievement of quiet beauty in his/her environment. Ms. William's book (accompanied with the beautiful prose of Nancy Drew, writer on garden life) is certainly a must have for anyone starting out in garen design, and the photographs make the book worth having for any garden enthusiast. I was shocked to see that no one had given it a five star rating till now!

I am very impressed with this unique book of over 900 shrubs that will add interest to any garden. The book starts with a glossary of botanical terms with b/w illustrations of the anatomy of leaves, flowers, fruits & conifers.

Each shrub has botanical & common name, zone, native habitat, size, spread & shape as well as descriptions of leaves, flowers & fruit, plus soil & sunlight requirements, disease tolerance, transplanting & propagation advice.

This is much more detailed than most reference books, giving information on winter appearance & landscaping value as well. There are 2-3 photos of each species including a full size view & leaf or flower close-ups.

Appendices conveniently list shrubs by attributes including zone, light & soil requirements, & color of bloom. There is even information on sources for each species and gardens where each can be seen.

Look for the companion book Plants That Merit Attention: Trees Vol. 1 which I also enjoyed.

Nancy Flinn has done some quite incredible work with gardens and prisoners. This book is an excellent guide to starting and running a successful prison garden. People who are locked up in jail for long periods of time often lose their souls while they're "in" and gardens are perhaps the most effective way for them to regain a sense of nature, patience, and compassion. As Ms. Flinn found, prisoners who become very interested in gardening become much less interested in crime. This fine book really ought to be required reading for those people in charge of all the thousands of prisons. The taxpayers would save a great deal of money if they would push gardening as therapy. My husbnd worked in a prison for many years teaching gardening and he had amazingly good results with horticulture and inmates. He and I have nothing but admiration for the job that Nancy Flinn did, which we first read about in the LA Times I believe. This is a fine book and ought to be brought back in print.

Vampires By: Nancy Garden gives you all the facts on vampires. I am a vampire master, and this book helped me earn that title. This book gives you how you would become a vampire, how to stop a vampire and their nature. You may think Count Dracula was a made up character created by the 1 and only Bram Stoker, but actually there was a real living man named Count Dracul. Not Count Dracula. He would be given that name later on in life. The definiton of Dracul is dragon and devil. People actually beleived that Count Dracul "The Impaler" made deals with the Devil. Count Dracul really lived in Transylvania, Romania and really did drink the blood of humans. Which made him look like a vampire. Count Dracul was renamed Count Dracula after some time. If you want to see a good vampire movie. See the very first Dracula, were Bela Lugosi stars as the Dark Prince. Although the movie is 69 years old, it is real spooky and eerie. And Bela Lugosi is a great vampire. Vampires is such a good book. I give my applause to Nancy Garden. WELL DONE! Vampires are my life. I live, eat, sleep vampires. Some other good horror authors is the greatest writer of all time, Bram Stoker. He wrote Dracula. And Anne Rice is real good. I personally like to read books by Daniel Cohen. He is like Nancy Garden, but he tells stories. You may think you know all about vampires, but you have to read this book. "Vampires" gives so much detail and explanation in it. If you're a vampire fanatic, like myself, buy this book.

I started reading this book one night and stayed up until 5am till I was finished! Nothing I read ever made me feel this way, like somebody finally understood. If you feel like nobody understands homosexual relationships, read this book and almost everything you think about may be in there. AOMM finally tells what it FEELS like to be in one of these relationships, and it shows (finally!) that homosexual relationships involve LOVE, something you don't hear much about because of all the "preachiness" of most books on this subject. Annie and Liza are great characters; Liza could be a model for how to cope in an ignorant world. It's not fair that Liza's greatest struggle in this book was being herself! I wish anyone who is ANY sexuality would read this, because it is so true. It is am extreme Eye Opener!!! If everyone was given books like this to read, maybe we would all understand each other a little bit better. It is a beautiful story of how two friends fell in love, nevermind the fact they are both the same sex. This book can be described in this statement: "Don't let ignorance win. Let love."

This was one of the first books I read dealing with homosexuality. I was happy to find a great story that made the two main characters falling in love a natural and gradual thing.
What I absolutely love about this book is that it doesn't have these boring two-dimensional characters that just go through the motions of love; but you can feel the EMOTION of love between them.

From the moment she meets Annie, Liza is fasinated by her. They quickly become friends and are having a great time together. Whenever Annie is with her, Liza's problems seem far away. When something happens to change thier friendship both girls are suprised. After housesetting for a teacher turns into something else, a whole world of troble awaits them both. Will Eliza be expelled from school? What will they tell their parents? Will things ever be the same again?

In a heart-touching story that will leave you breathless you will learn to always trust true love.

I have read Annie on My Mind a total of three times. The characters become so real to you, that you can almost feel everything they are going through. This book dosen't start off with any preachy blatant homosexuality 'accept us' type morales. It starts off with a girl who may live next door, and a beautiful love story with her friend.
One of the most romantic books I have read, which does; in the end teach you to be more accepting of other people. I don't know if that was the aim of the author or, if Liza and Annie become so real to you, that it just happens. A great book, and one that I think you would enjoy immensely.

This book isn't the best I've read. I picked this book up at the library because I adore Joan of Arc and I have studied her in school. This book isn't from Joan's point of view but from Gabrielle, a girl from Joan's village who was on a pillgramage with Joan's mother when she decided to follow Joan. She is now Gabrielle, a boy and page. This book gets more interesting because there is romance between Gabrielle and a boy she met at a convent? who also decided to follow Joan and become a soldier. What really made me angry about Joan's story is King Charles. She helped him become king and he (being the spineless weakling that he is) didn't help Joan when she was captured by the Burgundians. If you like Joan of Arc, watch the movie with Leelee Sobeinski!!

A fiction novel modeled around facts, this story is narrated by Gabrielle, a fictional friend of the French heroine and saint, Joan of Arc. Gabrielle, Joan's only female companion at war and the soldiers' doctor, chronicles the days before and during war to the day Joan is burned by the English. The true story is that Joan attempted to drive the British out France in the 15th century but the narrator is a fictional character detailing Joan's actions. It's adventurous, but also we read the tragedies the French had to face. I recommend this to those who need inspiration in bravery and courage. Excellent story!!!

This book was amazing! I didn't think much of it when I picked it up but after that I could never put it down again. It is a wonderful but tragic story of St. Joan of Arc, a young girl who goes to battle in France to end a terrible war. It is narrated by another girl, Gabrielle, who goes to war with her, as a healer. This book has so much depth and adventure and meaning to it. It is suspenseful, exciting, romantic, funny, sad, and breathtaking. Not many books have all that in it. I like books that change you after you read them and this was one of those books. This book was so well written and clear that it was like I was there with Gabrielle. I was excited with her, frightened with her and crying at the end with her. Read this incredible book and you won't be sorry.

I read The Secret Gerden when I was in the fifth grade. The book was a combination of realistic fiction and mystery. I was always looking for clues to explain the next chapter.I was so engrossed in the book that I read 30 pages every half an hour!
The whole plot of The Secret Garden was about a girl named Mary Lennox, an orphaned, disagreable looking, girl, who needed some action in her life. And she reached her goal. She was ten when she moved to her Uncle's house on a moor in Yorkshire. One of the housemaids, Martha, showed her around, and told Mary stories about her family that Mary enjoyed. On of Martha's brothers, Dickon, was an animal charmer and a nice, perfect boy who Mary fancyed that Mary finally met. He helped her uncover and bring to life a huge secret.This secret can not be shared with you, you'll have to find out yourself.Mean while, when Mary was sleeping at night, a childs cry woke her up. On day she investigated the noise. She found another secret on her way, a secret corrider. Will Mary find out who is screaming? If so, what should she do about it? Will Dickon and Mary succeed in bringing the secret alive?
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading exciting adventures. My opinion on The Secret Garden is that out of five stars I would give it 5 stars, because it was so fun to read, and I didn't want to stop!

Once upon a time, a little girl found a book on a library shelf with an interesting title. She took it home and discovered a world where gardens are locked, a boy can talk to animals, and mysteries abound in every corner of Misselthwaite Manor. And friendship is forever. Okay, you guessed it. The little girl was me. The story of Mary quite Contrary, a little girl with no one to love and no one who loved her, Colin the invalid who has spent his entire life inside the manor, and Dickon the simple boy from the moors well deserves the title "classic". There is simply no other story like it. Frances Hodgson Burnett has written a wonderful story about love and friendship between three very different children, and the secret garden that brings them together.

The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is a charming book about a girl named Mary Lennox. She is a spoiled and sickly child who lives in India. When her parents die because of a cholera epidemic, she moves to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her rich uncle in England. Things are a definite change for her. Slowly she becomes stronger and starts to take an interest in the outdoors. She meets all sorts of people like Martha, Dickon, and Colin. Martha is a maid on the grounds who has taken a fancy to Mary, and Dickon is her brother. Dickon is quite an unusual fellow. He possesses the ability to talk to animals and is able to grow anything with a little bit of soil. Colin, who you will meet later in the story, is a child who has basically given up the will to live, believing he is doomed to be a hunchback like his father. Strong-willed Mary reprimands him and takes matters into her own hands. Mary has all kinds of adventures with strange sounds at night, funny accents, and a locked garden. The Secret Garden is a wonderful book about friendship, determination, and perseverence. I would recommend this book to someone of any age. It is beautifully written and full of life.