The Canadian Gardener: A Guide to Gardening in Canada

Pleasance Crawford, a Canadian landscape and garden history researcher
and writer, is the editor of Landscape Architectural Review.

This useful and beautiful book will appeal to readers interested both in
plants and in garden design.

The book’s strengths are basic, down-to-earth horticultural advice
presented in a friendly, conversational style; sections on gardens for
various growing conditions; information on plants for all of Canada’s
plant-hardiness zones; and well-lit photographs of gardens designed both
by owners and by landscape architects, and of garden details.

Its weaknesses are poor copy-editing; captions that concentrate on
plant identification but leave many other questions unanswered, and a
dearth of photographs of gardens and plants in hardiness zones two,
three, and four—where some gardeners are highly accomplished while
others truly need the inspiration a book on Canadian gardening should
provide. Also, although Harris and Saunders “travelled from coast to
coast looking for gardens for this book,” most of the captions
disappoint by identifying the owner’s or designer’s name and the
garden’s hardiness zone, but not its location. Since Canada has few
strong regional gardening styles, guessing even which provinces the
illustrated gardens represent is generally impossible.