Taming Wildflowers: Bringing the Beauty and Splendor of Nature's Blooms into Your Own Backyard

I bought this used. It came a little warped, but was pleasantly surprised to find the copy had been signed by the author. I really like the content of this book! It’s very clearly organized and written and very inspiring with ideas for how to do your own arrangements at the end. It will be a great resource for a long time for anyone that loves gardening with native plants! Highly recommend! Miriam has a lovely writing style that really spoke to me.

This is a wonderful book about wildflowers -- covers various types of wildflowers, how to grow, maintain, arrange, propagate, preserve, them. etc. It even shows how to make lovely wedding bouquets and bouttiniers (sp?). I love it and loaned it to my sister who says she's going to buy a copy too.This is a lovely and information filled book.Prospective readers should also know that the book is available from St.Lynn's Press for $18.95 as of 10/2017!!!! I just bought another copy for a young woman who's interested in wild flower design.

Helpful photos of plant seedlings

Hard-pressed to give even the 3-star rating. First 4 chapters are pretty good, with the recommended types of wild flowers and their characteristics including size, light requirements, etc. However, after that, 2 chapters are devoted to seed-starting, tending the garden, etc. And then, a chapter on arranging cut flowers, and a chapter on how to do an outdoor wedding. Yawn. Who cares? Write a separate book about that girly stuff. I kinda' regret spending 20 bucks on this hardback.

As the author plows through her years of experience and vast knowledge of flower farming, I feel as though she is speaking directly to me. Ms. Goldberger takes you on a fabulous walk down the garden path where she'll show you what to plant, where and when to plant, all the way through harvesting and flower arranging. This truly delightful illustrated guide to natural beauty and her common sense approach to our delicate ecosystem is a must have for novices and experienced gardeners alike!

May be the best book I've gotten on plants. The format is easy to read, and full of useful information. Love the photos of seedlings as well. I direct sowed some seeds I was not familiar with, and it was a guessing game as to whether or not they were the weeds or the actual flower! I highly recommend this book. Become familiar with, and plant native flowers.

I wasn't sure I was going to get much out of this book since I tend to limit myself to local NY native plants but I learned a lot and got many useful tips and information about specific plants.

great pircures and very informative; some of the information is "scattered" in different areas of the book and there seems to be some duplication of data, But well worth it to go natural.

There are a lot of things to like about this book, but it is not without its flaws. The book seems to be geared primarily to introducing new gardeners to the joy of growing "wildflowers", but it can be confusing in places for the newbie. I'll start with what I like about it, and wrap up with the flaws, as I see them.First off, the pictures, for the most part, are fabulous. Not only does Goldberger have clear pictures of the flower, but also shows a picture of what the baby plant looks like. Although not really necessary for a new gardener, once your garden is established, this will really help you figure out which emerging plants in the spring are weeds, and which are supposed to be there. She also goes into fairly good detail in the front of the book on the importance of "wildflowers" (I will explain later why I continue to put this word in quotation marks) with a discussion about pollinators, birds and the connection to our own health. On this subject - the best book I have read to date is Doug Tallamy's book Brining Nature Home (https://www.amazon.ca/Bringing-Nature-Home-Wildlife-Expanded/dp/0881929921/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=tallamy&qid=1606070282&sr=8-2). Each flower has it's own page - there are 60 of her favourite "wildflowers" (which includes some grasses) - with excellent descriptions on height, colour, light, soil and moisture needs, a germination code for when you want to start your own from seed, and some of its key strengths and weaknesses (e.g. deer resistance, suitability for containers, salt tolerance, edibility, etc.) And finally indicates which states and provinces it is native to (more on this later, too). And I also like that she has arranged the plants based on the season they come into bloom - spring, late spring-early summer, summer, and fall. At the end of the book there are great instructions, based on years of her own experience, for starting your own plants from seed, on ecosystem gardening, on composting, and more. She concludes the book with a two page spread indicating which are the best wildflowers to grow, based on your soil type. All in all, this is a wonderful, fact and picture filled book that would be a great addition to any gardener's library.Now for what I didn't like: for starters, Goldberger has a very loose definition of a wildflower. At one point, she equates wildflowers with native plants, but I don't believe that is what most people think of when they hear the term. She even talks about her first attempt to plant a meadow by buying a package of "Northeastern Wildflower Meadow Mix" that was mostly non-native species, and the frustration that resulted. (This is EXACTLY how I got started into native plants, so I can relate.) She also has an entire section, set up in the same format as the native plant descriptions, of 19 non-natives like Chinese basil, scarlet runner beans, Mexican sunflower and zinnias. Not only are these non-natives, but it's hard to even picture them as "wildflowers". After that, my issues with the book get a little pickier - listing the state or province the native plants are native to is fine when you have small states, but Canadian provinces are HUGE, and plants native to southern Ontario, for instance, may not be (and probably aren't) native to most of the rest of the province. A native-range map would have been far more helpful in determining if one of these flowers would survive in your garden. Goldberger also includes a section on cut-flower arrangements and includes a section of photos showing off her arrangements. This is her business, after all, but it felt more like an advertisement than a book on growing wildflowers. And, finally, my own pet peeve about writing - the book could have used a good professional editor to help with the writing. The writing, for the most part, is good, but too often I came across awkward sentence structure that made me stop and re-read in order to be sure I understood what she was saying. For me, it just diminished the pleasure I got from reading it.My overall summary - this is still a great book for a new, or even experienced, gardener who wants to grow more native plants, despite what I see as its flaws. But if you really want to grow native plants - for all their benefits - use this book as a general guide, then check out the web to find out if that plant is native where you live or somewhere far away.

Taming Wildflowers is a terrific resource for anyone want to get into native perennial gardening. The Wildflower Farm website is also terrific but so much nicer to hold the book and read through with the beautiful pictures. Major plus is the unusual inclusion of photos of what the seedlings look like for identification when they germinate possibly among other weeds. Highly recommended.

I like the information grouped by blooming season. I wishes the photos of the germination leaves were all close ups for details

Great read. The author passion for the subject is clearly evident.