City Gardens Guide

City gardens are an ideal way to communicate with nature while living in a hectic urban environment. A new book, “The City Gardener’s Handbook,” by Linda Yeng (Random House: $26.95) provides a guide to growing plants in small spaces and containers.

While Southern California gardeners will ignore some of the information such as “pile fresh snow around street trees for a meltdown contribution,” the book has much valuable information suited to our climate.

The garden design ideas in the book are outstanding as is the container growing advice.

Interspersed throughout the book are special sections titled “Garden Plans and Photographs” featuring diagrams and attractive photographs illustrating various aspects of big city gardening. This book offers many ideas for adding touches of beauty among the high-rises.