Dunwoody Gardener Publishes First Book

With winter approaching and cold weather starting to settle in, it’s time to start thinking about compiling a reading list of garden books to brighten the short, gray and dreary days and long cold nights ahead.

Dunwoody gardeners need to look no further than a few area nurseries, bookstores and gift centers.

Several local merchants are carrying a recently published book by longtime Dunwoody gardener and first-time author Althea Griffin.

The book, Perennials … What you need to know! Tips and Advice to Grow Tried and True Perennials, will be easy to spot. It has a bright yellow cover bordered with cheerful illustrations of a coneflower, black-eyed Susan, bleeding hearts, ferns and other perennials.

Published in June, it is a valuable reference guide to selecting, planting and caring for perennials that will grow well in Dunwoody gardens.

The book begins with basic information about how to plan a garden, select plants for the garden and suggestions for placing plants in growing spaces of all sizes. Other tips include mixing and matching foliage and using single plants, such as a specimen plant, to create a visual point of interest – a WOW factor.

Griffin then offers an A to Z selection of easy-to-grow, tried and true perennials that don’t need a lot of work. (Actually an A to Y list! The plant selections stop with Yarrow, the fern leaf variety.)

Each plant includes all the information a gardener would need to know about that plant and whether it would grow well for them in their conditions.

Each plant description includes such information as light requirements, bloom color, type of foliage, water requirements, how to use it in the garden, planting tips, fertilizer needs, how to prune it, how to divide it and share it with friends, what pests might attack it and different varieties that are available. There’s even a place for notes.

There are also sections on beneficial insects, garden accent pieces, chores by season, garden terms and light requirements for different plants.  

This is a book that will appeal to both the casual gardener for its easy-to-read, non-threatening style and to the experienced gardener for its wealth of information. Much of the information is basic and can be applied to any ornamental garden, not just a perennial garden.

It’s delightfully illustrated with cheerful drawings of plants, flowers and insects by Griffin’s sister, Kate Ruland, a draftsman by trade.

The book’s neatly organized chapters and the gentle flow reflect Griffin’s less-is-more approach to gardening. “Don’t over plant,” she advises.”That way you can appreciate each plant. Besides, it’s fun to watch the garden fill in.” And, she cautions, “plants need air circulation.”

Griffin comes by her knowledge of plants and gardening naturally.

She grew up in Vermont, “out in the country” as she puts it, and both her parents as well as her maternal grandmother were gardeners. Her father was a vegetable gardener and her mother grew ornamentals.

Even then Griffin liked an orderly look to a garden.  She remembers that her mother’s garden was messy and she worked in it with an eye to giving it a neat, kept appearance.

She recalls doing the same thing with a walk to her grandmother’s house on Long Island – a house she describes as a George-Washington-slept-there kind of house.

After she married, her husband’s job took them to two stops in Pennsylvania, Columbus, Ohio and, finally, to Atlanta. Along the way, Griffin kept her love of gardening.

“When we moved here in 1986,” she said, “it was with a wheel barrow full of plants.” She also brought heritage with her in the form of her “grandmother’s daisy.”

Thus was her Atlanta garden born – so was a friendship with Gloria Lee, an artist, fellow PTA volunteer and gardener.

After a while they realized they were being asked a lot of questions about gardening. So they decided to stop giving away advice and reverse their cash flow on buying plants by starting a landscaping business. The garden friends became Garden Gals in 2004, building the business around common sense gardening and hard-earned lessons of trial and error. The business is doing well, and so are they.

In fact, it was contacts they made through Garden Gals that created a path that led Griffin to create and publish her first book.

I got so many client questions about pruning, watering and other things, I decided to write the book,” she explains.

Now, Griffin’s beginning to work on another one. She’s in the early stages of this newest project that she says will also be written for home gardeners. The title is a work in progress, but the purpose of the book will be to explain through words and images what groups of plants – from annuals to trees -- bloom or look good together in the same season. 

This winter, she says, she’ll have more time to work on it than during the summer growing season.

So, while you are curled up under an afghan on a cold, blustery day enjoying her first book, Griffin will be at her computer writing her second. Dunwoody gardens and gardeners, no doubt, will be the better for it.

 Where to find Perennials … What you need to know!

• The Copper Pig, 5529 Chamblee -Dunwoody Rd., Dunwoody, 770 394.1744
• Gramma B’s, 300 Hammond Drive, Sandy Springs, 678 705-4687
• Ashe Simpson, 4961 Peachtree Industrial Blvd, Chamblee, 770 458-3224
• The Chandlery, 950 Canton Street, Roswell, 770 993-5962
• Scottsdale Farms Garden Center, 15639 Birmingham Highway,  Alpharetta, 770 777-5875
• Eagle Eye Bookshop, 2076 North Decatur Road, Decatur, 404 486-0307
• Atlanta Botanical Garden Gift Shop, 1345 Piedmont Ave. NE Atlanta, 404 876.5859

For more information on ordering Perennials … What you need to know! Tips and Advice to Grow Tried and True Perennials, by Althea Griffin, visit www.PerennialsWhatYouNeedToKnow.com.