Books: Unusual, Useful Plants

Why not install several unusual plants in your garden -- plants that lend some pizazz to the border, cutting, or herb garden -- but that have also have a life beyond the outdoors.  In Harvest: Unexpected Projects Using 47 Extraordinary Garden Plants (Ten Speed Press, 2017), landscape designers Stefani Bittner and Alethea Harampolis profile 47 plants that can be artfully used in arrangements and also used in foods and medicines.

The authors are owners of Homestead Design Collective, a landscape design firm based in San Francisco, and they definitely have an eye for the extraordinary in plants and their uses.  How about a vase filled with foxglove, flowering basil, black cumin flowers, scented geranium, anise hyssop, and alpine strawberry?

Plant a bay laurel in the garden and use its branches for modern wreaths; grow a pomegranate as a multi-trunk shrub or a small tree and enjoy the seeds of the fruit in many, many ways. 

Each of the 47 featured plants is accompanied by lovely photos, as well as growing instructions and a page devoted to an unanticipated use for its leaves, fruits, or flowers.  The book will get you thinking about sprin and the new plants you'd like to give a whirl in the garden.