Gardening in the Desert: A Guide to Plant Selection and Care (ISBN 0816520577)

desert gardening:
An excellent book that should be in every desert gardener's library. Not only does she offer sound advice she is occasionally, and refreshingly, very candid in her opinions. I have just ordered my second copy as I made the mistake of lending my first copy.

Desert gardening made easy:
Excellent beginner's guide to desert gardening. Not surprising, bias is to low desert where she lives. An expanded version to include intermediate and high desert would be welcome, but the priciples as laid out hold throughout the Southwest. Reads well.

a good narrative:
I read this book cover-to-cover, which wasn't what I expected to do; I expected to use it more as a reference. However, it's written so well and contains so much helpful advice that I found it easy to read straight through. I'm new at gardening, but I'm already making good use of the information in my own yard.

Good info, bad images:
Great info for the desert gardener, but if you want to know what the plants and cacti actually look like, the small black and white pictures just don't cut it. Gardening is a visual discipline, pictures do speak a thousand words.

Gardening in the Desert: A Guide to Plant Selection & Care:
This is a very good reference book for selecting the type of plants I will need to landscape a desert setting.