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Rating: 
Summary: Not Just About Gardening
Review: "Gardening With a Wild Heart" is a wonderful book. Even if you could care less about gardening or native plants, it is still a great read. There is so much in here about different ways of life, past and present, in unique Marin County. Open it to any page and you will find fascinating information on a wide variety of subjects, from actual recipes, to native American philsophy. This book fascinated me for hours, and that rarely happens for me with non-fiction books.
Rating:
Summary: Not Just About Gardening
Review: "Gardening With a Wild Heart" is a wonderful book. Even if you could care less about gardening or native plants, it is still a great read. There is so much in here about different ways of life, past and present, in unique Marin County. Open it to any page and you will find fascinating information on a wide variety of subjects, from actual recipes, to native American philsophy. This book fascinated me for hours, and that rarely happens for me with non-fiction books.
Rating:
Summary: A book every California gardener should read
Review: A Californian living overseas, I happened to find this book while looking for ideas for a piece of property I own in California. Initially I had "cottage garden" in mind; later, my thinking evolved to more exotic tropical plants. This wonderful book was the first step in my complete conversion to the native plant movement. California is an ecological "island" with an incredible richness of native plants: 6,000 species, of which something like 2,000 live nowhere else. Yet these have been decimated by exotic weeds, development and large-scale agriculture. We should be proud of the native California plants that are now prized by landscapers and gardeners all over the world: the redwood, douglas fir, monterey pine, lilac, and all wildflowers especially the poppy, our State Flower (to name but a few). Yet despite the growing momentum of the native plant movement in the state, many gardeners are indifferent to the debate. Look for the tufted 6-foot stalks of pampas grass as you drive around California: this aggressive invader from Peru is still being planted by gardeners and landscapers. Consider that eight million acres in the state (and growing) are covered with yellow star thistle, another exotic weed. Aggressive non-native plants out-compete natives (even to the point of extinction) and contribute to the decline of the environment, often in the form of soil erosion. The most important lesson from this thought-provoking book is that we are interconnected, and the decisions we take on our postage-stamp properties affect the entire environment. We can make a difference. What we do on our little plots can do a lot to restore the ecological well-being of the entire state. As we see the birds and other animals - creatures that evolved specifically for our native flora - return to reclaim the land, parcel by parcel, we can say we have done something positive for the state of California.
Rating:
Summary: A book every California gardener should read
Review: A Californian living overseas, I happened to find this book while looking for ideas for a piece of property I own in California. Initially I had "cottage garden" in mind; later, my thinking evolved to more exotic tropical plants. This wonderful book was the first step in my complete conversion to the native plant movement. California is an ecological "island" with an incredible richness of native plants: 6,000 species, of which something like 2,000 live nowhere else. Yet these have been decimated by exotic weeds, development and large-scale agriculture. We should be proud of the native California plants that are now prized by landscapers and gardeners all over the world: the redwood, douglas fir, monterey pine, lilac, and all wildflowers especially the poppy, our State Flower (to name but a few). Yet despite the growing momentum of the native plant movement in the state, many gardeners are indifferent to the debate. Look for the tufted 6-foot stalks of pampas grass as you drive around California: this aggressive invader from Peru is still being planted by gardeners and landscapers. Consider that eight million acres in the state (and growing) are covered with yellow star thistle, another exotic weed. Aggressive non-native plants out-compete natives (even to the point of extinction) and contribute to the decline of the environment, often in the form of soil erosion. The most important lesson from this thought-provoking book is that we are interconnected, and the decisions we take on our postage-stamp properties affect the entire environment. We can make a difference. What we do on our little plots can do a lot to restore the ecological well-being of the entire state. As we see the birds and other animals - creatures that evolved specifically for our native flora - return to reclaim the land, parcel by parcel, we can say we have done something positive for the state of California.
Rating:
Summary: Transformational!
Review: I am new to gardening. I was initially seduced by the pictures of California gardens in Sunset magazine. Over the long term, I saw its approach to be only about style and appearance and pleasing the humans. This book on the other hand connects backyard gardening with the wild, with wildlife, and gave me a reason for gardening: for the denizens of the garden -- the birds, bees, butterflies, insects, and squirrels. Good companion books: Glen Keator's books on California natives, Marjorie Schmidt's book, Casebeer's California wildflower book.
Rating: 
Summary: Lovely to read, but fell short of expectations
Review: I found this book very lyrical and inspiring, but it falls short of helping the beginning native plant gardener learn how to become a "backyard restorationist". The book is focused more on the author's personal gardening journey, which is lovely if you are looking for a travel-writing type of format, but I personally would have preferred more details and pictures about how an individual can recognize the native plants to her area, how to collect seeds (where legal), what plants naturally occur together (can we plant wildflowers at the feet of coyote bush and expect them to survive?) and plant lists.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but missing pictures for identification
Review: I live in Southern California, and have begun to take an interest in planting more native species in my yard and garden. I picked this book up at the Getty Museum after visiting their beautiful gardens. This bug is full of important information, and taught me (to my chagrin) that I had been guilty of planting lots of invasive alien species in my yard. Armed with a new resolve to "go native" I set about trying to find and identify the many native plants she describes in her book. Unfortunately, the book has only a limited set of color plates showing some native flowers. And even those images generally show multiple plants, with a description such as "california poppie, five-spot, and baby blue eyes near coyote scrub, California fescue and native bunch grass". While this is helpful, I was unable to tell which plant was which (aside from the poppies). To use this book to its fullest, you need a good pictorial guide to California plants. Unfortunately I don't know of one. Hopefully a more knowledgable reader can point me in the right direction.
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