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Rating: 
Summary: a superficial, and slightly dangerous guide
Review: I quite liked this book to start with. It offers Judy's own personal opinions on what has worked well for her here. That sort of personal, hands-on advice is great. However, Tennessee, particularly where I live near the Smoky Mountains, is suffering greatly from the impact of people on the land. Vast tracts of our land are now under the lawnmower - vast amounts of chemical fertilizers are dumped onto our 'gardens' and leach into our lakes and streams ... our wildlife, including our native plants, is under stress. This sort of book only promotes this damage. There is no mention anywhere of lessening the damage that you can do in your own garden. Several of the plants that Judy recommends as good strong garden plants are on the Tennessee Exotic Pest Plant Council List : species that seriously damage our environment by driving out the native species so important for the food chain. All too often, we see precious natural resources being squandered for short term profit. This is happening here in Tennessee - colonies of native plants are destroyed for sale in garden centers for a quick profit. There is no need for this - it is perfectly possible to propagate and sell nursery stock and leave our wild areas intact. Judy makes no mention of these issues, yet it's trivially simple to avoid causing damage if you know to only buy nursery stock. My final problem with the book is that Judy only recommends good, solid well-known plants that are commonly available. This is fine for the beginner at whom she is aiming. However, you would see all the information she gives, on the side of the seed packet, or at the garden center ! Pretty much all of the herbaceous plants can be raised easily from seed at a tenth of the garden centre cost - you wouldn't know that from this book and will end up spending a vast fortune on nursery raised annuals if you're not careful
Rating: 
Summary: Great gardening book and not just for TN
Review: This is a friendly gardening book for both the beginner
as well as the more advanced gardener. Lots of color
pictures make for good reference. Although I don't
live in Tennessee, I found the book useful. Ms. Lowe's
writting style makes for a good read even if you just
like to look at plants.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent guide for Tennessee homeowners
Review: We moved to Tennessee from another state and were having trouble finding plants that would grow well here and we also needed new instructions for caring for the plants that we were used to, since they grew differently and bloomed at different times here. Thank goodness we found this book. It has made all the difference. The author obviously knows her plants, she writes from experience. And her advice is solid -- it works. The book lists a number of plants that were unfamiliar to me -- lorapetalum, arum, hardy begonia. And I was reluctant to try them. But after I had good success with the other advice in the book, I did plant them, and was glad I had. They are delightful. The section on starting seeds and the additional advice in the annuals chapter about growing from seed encouraged me to try starting some plants from seed and it has been fun. Also good are the sections on shade plants and how to cope with
slugs and snails. I definitely recommend it.
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