Trowel Tips: Gardening Hints from Canada's Garden Guru

Pleasance Crawford is the co-author of The Canadian Landscape and Garden
History Directory and Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden
Writing.

On the Internet in the summer of 2001, Garden Web Forum participants
chatted about their favorite Canadian garden-show hosts. Many singled
out Ken Beattie and his WTN phone-in, “Get Growing.” They praised
the infectious enthusiasm, breadth of knowledge, and sense of humor that
have made this Saskatchewan “garden guru” popular across the
country. After 25-plus years as a professional horticulturist (15 as a
TV phone-in host and several as a leader of tours to garden destinations
around the world), Beattie turned to writing books.

Gardening Journal is a spiral-bound volume with calendar space for
recording each day’s horticultural activities, observations, and
weather. Such journals sometimes allow for several years’ worth of
entries, so that the diarist can easily find out when last spring’s
first crocus bloomed. The Beattie version accommodates a single year but
adds six plans for the “standard rectangular lot.” The journal also
includes a two- or three-page list of garden tasks for each month, some
sidebars, and, at the bottom of each calendar page, a one-sentence
“Beattie Tip.” Busy gardeners, who will appreciate the lie-flat
format, may hardly notice the extras.

Trowel Tips will appeal to Beattie fans, neophyte gardeners, those who
enjoy a mix of fact and lore, and those who like to receive their
information in what the author calls “short snippets.” Having
decided on 10 garden-basics chapters, Beattie chose the entries by
reviewing the questions asked most frequently on his phone-ins. The
snippets—hundreds of them—range from acidic soil to zygocactus, with
liberal sprinklings of compost and Triple Mix as well as commercial
fertilizers and nonorganic pesticides. Beattie recommends them all.
Wisely, he also provides a six-page index to help readers find what they
want to know.

These two books are not necessarily companion volumes. (In fact, an
editor should have weeded out Garden Journal’s few but annoying
suggestions to “see” certain chapters and pages in Trowel Tips.) Nor
is either book the perfect choice for gardeners in all parts of Canada.
For library purposes, Trowel Tips is the only choice.