That you would think Dirr's book is great but Whitcomb an idiot, Jacobson a lightweight is perfectly consistent.

Dirr was first. Was he the best? Until a better one comes along, he is. He also established a market for a book that before him didn't exist, yet a market (nationally) where there is only room for one. However, he's done. His Manual will most likely never again be revised.

He's opinionated. This one trait made him both revered and reviled. The people that don't like him...tend to be the ones who have strong opinions of their own. Imagine that...people who deal with something a lot tend to have strong opinions about what they work with on a regular basis. Shocking.

Do I hold everything he says as Gospel? Lord no, I'm the first to tell you I have crammed the margins with notes and addendums, to the point that I'm going to have to buy a new copy of the last edition (my current one is held together by rubber bands...I can't decide if it would the ultimate insult to ask him to autograph it, or if it would the greatest compliment to offer a book to be signed that has been so often opened).

In every part of the country but the NW, Jacobsen is a lightweight. It's a little surprising I even know about him, despite his personality cult in certain area(s). There are other authors specific to NE, the MW, or the SW tht while they are dominant in their market...they will never be more than a footnote elsewhere.

Jacobsen's biggest problem is Dirr's...he's just a opinionated, but tries to take himself so seriously. Dirr embraced the opinions, and phrases them in ways that take you by surprise, and in doing so, either thrill you or repulse you. I'd say most people kinda like it. ACJ takes himself soo seriously, yet he's just as opinionated. Again, someone who deals with something alot develops opinions about it? Could we be on to something?

As for Whitcomb, his books sit on the shelf, collecting dust. Every once in a while I'll take them down, peruse them a bit, then put them back for another rainy day somehwere down the road. If I wanted to buy into all of his ancillary products, great, I'd be hooked. Actually not, I'd by into Forrest Keeling RPM, but that's a container of a different root hair. But where everyone else gets condemned for selling out for something as base as money, he gets praised?

He gets quoted because he put into words all those things no one else did. For that, he fully deserves to sell all the copies he can.

Beyond that, what I find of anyone's work means little beyond what value I find in it. I have something over 200 books covering nearly every facet of plants, particularly those woody, you could imagine. Some should probably be utilized more fully than they are. I'd rather use the Diseases of Trees and Shrubs and the Insects that Feed on Trees and Shrub and Insect Pests of Forest Trees, but most people just want to know what's in the Ortho Problem Solver. Do I need to bury them with info, or answer their question?

Maybe the tendency to be annoyed by opinions of plants being expressed comes from thinking they are baseless. Otherwise, I don't get it. I also don't understand adoration for works that aren't very carefully prepared and/or based on original research, and dismissal of those that are. Bigger is not always better. Some big fat plant books, including manuals and monographs are pretty sloppy.

As a landscape designer, rather than a nurseryman, I find that books on floras of other countries more interesting and useful than a Manual of Woody Plants, and Plant Compendiums such as the RHS Index of Garden Plants or Bailey's Manual of Cultivated Plants more useful. I would rather know where something comes from, the climate and geography of its origins, over the comments and proposed uses of an assigned grouping of plants. This may also have to do with the fact that books on hardy woody plants don't really pertain that much to California, where hardy woody plants are just the tip of the iceberg.

I wouldn't want to be without the reference books on tropicals, subtropicals, succulents, bromeliads, mediterranean climate plants, floras of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Portugal and Greece, and others I have picked up while traveling overseas. All these types of books put me in the frame of mind to design gardens as plant communities, using climatically appropriate plants for both esthetics and to solve problems in the garden. I also find it very handy to be able to consult reference books that give lists of plants for particular situations, such as Roland Hoyt's book, Ornamental Plants for Subtropical Landscapes, or Philip Chandler's Reference Lists of Ornamental Plants for Southern California Gardens. These sorts of books provide a point of departure for discovering plants for purposes that I might not have considered using, and allow one to make up their own minds about whether the advice given is appropriate in your particular situation.

An even greater resource that I truly value, is the close proximity of some great local botanic gardens, which provide endless opportunities to see new and old plants in the flesh, in season, and give fresh insights throughout the year. We are also quite blessed here in California, with many wholesale nurseries that provide great on line and descriptive cataloges of the various plants they grow, where they came from and date of introduction. These provide a history of current plant introductions, and give a sense of trends in the nursery trade.

Lastly I really do appreciate my collection of landscape design books that are mostly compendiums of current designers around the world. It is always refreshing to see a whole range of design, and try to keep current with what is going on in the rest of the world.

That's often what you have to do to "get" a particular plant or idea, pore over (and compare) multiple references to it AND go look at a live specimen or a demonstration of the concept.

Note that the RHS INDEX has quantities of factual errors carried over from the DICTIONARY. It even describes a tree under a fictitious name that I have never seen used elsewhere. Another reader was said to have counted 800 mistakes in one viewing (or the DICTIONARY) soon after it came out.

I got so tired of running into mistakes I threw my copy of the INDEX away.

That was supposed to be "of the DICTIONARY."

I have 3 books that I have worn the covers off of: Perfect Plant Perfect Place, Plants of the Pacific Northwest, and The Sunset Western Garden Guide.

My one other great resource is the web. Specifically: Slugs and Salal, WSU Gardening in Western Washington, Monrovia, and The Garden Web.

Happy Holidays, Garden Weber's.