GROW YOUR OWN MONSTERS

British-flavored step-by-step instructions, along with useful, sometimes humorous illustrations, encourage beginning gardeners to raise some rather bizarre plants.

The authors open with a few pages of general advice on good locations for plants, pots, choices of soil, feeding and watering, sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings and constructing a variety of mini-greenhouses from household materials. Subsequent sections cover a variety of unusual plants: squirting cucumber, voodoo lily, Abyssinian banana, cardoon, walking stick cabbage, Venus fly trap, pitcher plant, giant echium and lychee. There are close-up color photographs of the plants, and attractive cartoon illustrations demonstrate some of the key gardening techniques. Unfortunately, the text fails to mention that the squirting cucumber is poisonous and the giant echium can cause skin reactions in those that touch it, particularly troublesome since the photo in that section shows a boy grabbing it. The cardoon is considered a “noxious weed” in California; the text merely cautions that in some places, cardoon “can spread their seeds around and grow all over the place,” and should not be allowed to go to seed in those areas. Additionally, the described propagation difficulties of some of these plants may discourage many. A plant source follows, including nurseries in Europe and North America, as well as a glossary.