Helen,

I have read all of Rosalind Creasy's books over the years. My favorite is the updated one from a couple of years ago. I think it came out in 2010. It reflects everything she's learned in her long career of designing and installing edible landscapes, plus the photos of edible landscapes from across the country, as well as from various years in her own yard, are just so amazing and inspiring.

I buy a lot of used books too, and often get them either from the Half-Price Book stores in Texas, or from the HPB Marketplace on line. In one sense, the half-price book store name is misleading, because older books are often much less than half-price. I ordered 26 books once online from HPB Marketplace and every single one of them was $1 or less, plus shipping. I also order from Amazon, and am a fan of Susan Wittig Albert and have read everything she's written. Her China Bales series of herbal mysteries are my favorites. I've never yet had a single used book arrive in poor condition.

I'm so used to ordering used gardening books online that it takes a rare and special book for me to order it the minute it is published---Rosalind Creasy's book was one of those that I wanted so badly that I ordered it brand new the minute it hit the website. Just a look at the cover alone is enough to inspire a person to buy the book and make edible landscaping their new passion.

Way back in the day when we had just moved here and my garden was tiny, I read her Edible Rainbow Garden book and that inspired me to plant my then-much-smaller garden as an edible rainbow garden for several years, with each raised bed featuring one color of the rainbow. That, in turn, led me into lots of new discoveries. I already grew heirloom tomatoes, but in order to have my edible rainbow garden filled with plants of the right color, I had to search for purple, blue, green, orange and yellow tomato varieties, and for red, blue, green and purplish corn varieties. They are a lot easier to find now than they were in the early 2000s, and the blue tomato ("Blue Fruit") that I found back then wasn't really blue---it was more of a black tomato. Now there actually are blue tomatoes, although I have found their flavor unimpressive.

One of these days I am going to plant a Wizard of Oz garden like the one Rosalind Creasy planted so long ago. I remember reading about it in a magazine and seeing the photos in one of her books and saying to myself "I'm going to do that one of these days".

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Rosalind Creasy's Books: Edible Landscaping

I think Powell Garden near Kansas City uses her ideas. They use purple cabbage and kale and lettuce as ornamental plants in a quilt garden. Strawberries are used as a ground cover. And under a small tree they planted mint and it was beautiful.

Helen, thanks for posting the photos. They are gorgeous!

Dawn

I agree - her books are awesome! Did anybody go to the Oklahoma Gardening School last month at Myriad Gardens/Devon? She was there and gave a terrific presentation on edible landscaping. They had a bookstore set up outside the auditorium and they sold out of her books twice!

I love all her books, but my favorites are the Edible Mexican Garden and, like Dawn, the Edible Rainbow Garden published by Periplus. I get more ideas from that series. I have the latest book and enjoy it too.
I, too, love the Susan Albert books. I have them all and reread them often. I met her once at an herb sale down in Texas. There's a short series of gardening mysteries by Mary Freeman that I like. The first in the series is called Devil's Trumpet.