I recently purchased The Dry Gardening Handbook: Plants and Practices for a Changing Climate. I thought it was pretty much top notch from cover to cover and totally appropriate for the Northwest. I highly recommend it for anyone in the Northwest who doesn't live in swamp or a dark forest. Has anyone else seen it?

The book covers all important principles and aspects of developing a lush and appealing garden that doesn't require any water once established. There is also an A-Z plant index as one might expect with excellent coverage of such genera as Cistus, Lavandula, Rosmarinus, and Salvia. The book strongly emphasizes Mediterranean native plants and excludes many species native to the western US, but I can hardly fault the author for that since he is from southern France and any gardening book that chooses to emphasize practices, principles and/or style must be strongly regionally focused to be any good.

Unlike many (all?) other books I have seen on this topic, the quality and usefulness of information in this book truly reflects extensive personal experience with the plants and can't be understated.