The Prairie Gardener's Sourcebook: A Guide to Finding the Best Plants, Seeds, Products, and Information for Your Garden

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

While the Canadian prairies are a challenging environment for growers
because of brief and severe growing seasons, the region produces and can
sustain a great diversity of plants. The Prairie Gardener’s Sourcebook
is intended “to link [readers] with the many resources available to
short-season, cold-climate prairie gardeners.” The guide includes
extensive listings of nurseries, garden centres, and seed companies
(located both in and out of the prairie provinces), notes on particular
gardening specialties (e.g., aquatic plants, grasses, vegetables), and
sundry information on garden products, public gardens, relevant
publications, and educational options.

Both novice gardeners and professional horticulturalists interested in
prairie gardening should find the guide extremely useful. Its
comprehensive listing and description of gardening resources also
include relevant e-mail addresses, Web sites, and fax numbers where
applicable. Anyone asking the question “Where do I find this plant?”
is presented with numerous options. Detailed indexes make finding
information on particular plants or nurseries a breeze. This reviewer
visited Calgary recently and found the book extremely helpful as a
reference for tracking down desired seed and plant companies. One caveat
that should be mentioned—and this would apply to any book of this
kind—is that much of the information on businesses will likely be
out-of-date as time passes (as some cease their operations and others
pop up), so that the book’s usefulness will necessarily be greater in
the short term.