If you consider yourself a lavender lover--that is to say, if you are mesmerized by the plant's delicious aroma, enchanted by its long, rich history, and passionate about its medicinal uses, The Lavender Garden is for you. This lovely book offers instructions on growing, maintaining, harvesting, and drying the plant. Author Robert Kourik includes a comprehensive profile of each variety including history, cultivation, bloom period, flower and foliage shapes, and landscape and culinary use--information that's most useful in determining which of the 16 varieties are right for one's garden. Each entry also contains suggestions on companion plantings that achieve the most aesthetic effect.

The sections on craft projects and culinary uses are outstanding. Kourik offers simple instructions on making oils, potpourri, perfume, and pillows, and the ins and outs of cooking with lavender. Twelve recipes and a list of display gardens and seed sources round out the back of the book. If you are looking to grow your knowledge about varieties of lavender, or would like to foster a friend's interest, The Lavender Garden is sure to delight.


Conde Nast House and Garden
"Lavender is hot-that's what friends in northern California have been telling me. A year ago, you aspired to a personal olive grove and your own first virgin cold press. But now those in the know are planting fields of lavender You'll be doing it, too, my sources assured me. Not me, I thought, smug with Yankee conservatism. Then I visited Sonoma County... Kourik has been growing lavender in 12 species and dozens of horticultural strains for more than 20 years, and he notes that some form of this herb will grow any place in North America where winter temperatures don't drop below oF (north of that, Kourik recommends it as a pot plant). Still, as a group, lavenders struck me as the ultimate Californian plants: elegant, sensual, and almost effortless.'

FROM THE PUBLISHER