Gardening with Native Plants of the South is a reference book along the lines of a plant encyclopedia - and is about as dry a read as the dictionary. If you live in the south and love gardening naturally - or want to work towards that instead of an English manor landscaping style Americans still persistently try to emulate despite living in a totally different climate and continent, this is a great reference tool with over 200 plants sorted by height (tall trees, short trees, shrubs, flowers, ground cover). I read the introductory material - then skimmed through the garden planning section and the "dictionary" section - before placing it in the gardening portion of my library where it will hang out as a little used reference until I start my shade garden (right now I am concentrating on the food portion of the garden) - at which point I will pour through it to fill in the bare, dry, caking area beneath my neighbors behemoth trees - most shade gardens are moist, so any help in that is going to be great.

I am rating the book at meeting its aim as an excellent reference source to encourage people to create more native environments. Each entry describes growing height, spacing, sun to shade, blooms, drainage, soil, root system, etc. and has (unfortunately) only one picture. For a really good encyclopedia (which would be triple the size and cost - and the introduction does indicate the author and publisher were aiming at something affordable for the shelf rather than exhaustive on the topic), I would have like a picture of the plant leaf, a picture of its flower and/or fruits, a spring, summer, fall, and winter picture so I can pick it out around my house. But I think those are dreams beyond my checkbook and will enjoy having this fairly workable solution.

The mark down on the book is its ability to cross-reference. Want dogwood - look for "flowering dogwood". Want honeysuckle - well that is "coral honeysuckle". Want a certain plant, you may need to look for its more popular cousin first. To me this isn't a big problem because each size section is manageable to page search, but it does impact the book's ability to be a good reference.

An interesting book, Ms. Wasowski gives us pause when she explains at the beginning why many songbirds and butterflies are endangered. She refers to their habitat, including what they should eat. Planning your native garden to include these concerns is just one of the many topics she covers.

I would have loved if the author included any cultivars of the native plant with a minor description. Instead, included with each plant listed are important hints and suggestions along with native range, related species, companion plants and wildlife that each affects. Is this a book for the beginner? Probably not. Are you looking for plants other than natives? Try something else. Would I have loved to see more information and pictures? Absolutely. Not every book will please everyone.

Among other things I look for three important criteria when giving a garden book five stars. Is it a keeper, do I want it for my bookshelf to reread and refer to at a later date? Would I recommend it to another Florida gardener that has experience with our area? Lastly, because I am visual, are the pictures in the book clear and colorful?

Because the plants she listed are NATIVES they should be able to handle our heat and humidity. What they may not handle is severe cold. When she gives you the plant's native range she is letting you know that it should do well in that general area; further north it may die. Common sense tells me that not everything listed will grow in my area of Florida even though it is a native to the south. The winter of 2009/2010 was below average for my state. Where I normally have some days in the high twenties we had continual cold getting as low as 15 degrees. Any good gardener is going to research a plant she or he is not familiar with or hasn't seen growing in their area.