Sunday, May 18, 2:00 pm

Nan Sterman, author of California Gardener's Guide II

Gardening for Southern California: The Mediterranean Approach

Nan Sterman is an award-winning garden writer, gardening expert, and horticulturist. Sterman regularly contributes to regional and national publications, including Sunset and Better Homes and Gardens. In addition to her writing career, Sterman is a regular radio guest, has been featured on DIY Network television specials, and is the host of A Growing Passion on the San Diego PBS affiliate.

There will be a reception and book signing immediately following this event.

from Sunset Magazine:
BOOK REVIEWS
Garden reading
New books take you on an inspiring tour of Western gardens
by Sharon Cohoon and Jim McCausland

Smart plants for today's gardener
Nan Sterman's well-reasoned portfolio of personal favorites

When you visit a nursery, do you wish you had a personal shopper in tow to help you sort out the confusion of choices? (There are so many things you can plant in Southern California, it's hard to know what you should plant.) Nan Sterman's new book, California Gardener's Guide, Volume II (Cool Springs Press, 2007; $25), feels like that personal shopper.

Sterman has narrowed the formidable field of possibilities to just 186 write-ups, from annuals to trees, focusing on ones that have proven to be well adapted to our Mediterranean climate and are easy to grow; in the majority of cases, she vouches for them from personal experience. Familiar plants such as camellia, New Zealand flax, and salvia are included, as are some surprises, such as conebush (Leucadendron), honeybells (Hermannia verticillata), Mexican lily (Beschorneria yuccoides), and ornamental oregano (Origanum spp.).

For every choice, Sterman also suggests companions — like yellow-flowered winter cassia (also sold as Senna bicapsularis) with purple Mexican bush sage and burgundy sunrose. Or blue chalk sticks (Senecio mandraliscae) with yellow bulbine and pink African daisy.

Helpful tips and techniques are scattered throughout the book and are grouped into a dedicated section at the back. How to get cactus spines out painlessly, for example. Or how to use hebe to prop up a lovely but floppy anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum).

The list of retail and mail-order specialty nurseries in Sterman's Resources section is pretty great too.