BOOK REVIEWS

Notes from a
Non-gardener's
Diary

Lyndsay Meager & Don Chapple
RNZFABS
$NZ10

THE authors - residents of Waiheke Island - have put together a clear, entertaining handbook focusing, in the main, on the weeds that mar their Hauraki Gulf paradise.

As their introduction says, most weeds are plants that are easy to love a first sight. and most gardeners have proudly cultivated new plants that later turned out to be pests.

Sections detail various "families" of weeds: vines and climbers, grasses, groundcovers and perennials; shrubs and trees and so on. Each species is marked clearly with a tick or a cross, leaving the reader in no doubt whether it's friend or foe.

While the book's focus is firmly Waiheke Island, there is much that will apply and appeal to gardeners (and "non-gardeners") elsewhere.

Notes from a Non-gardener's Diary can be obtained from the Hauraki Branch, Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, PO Box 314, Ostend, Waiheke Island. Email: br@slingshot.co.nz

Weekend Gardener, Issue 135, 2003, Page 32

Reproduced with permission from the former Weekend Gardener magazine. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the RNZIH