Reviews for Weed Science: Principles and Applications

The average rating for Weed Science: Principles and Applications based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-15 00:00:00 Justin Henderson This is a great book which will help you focus on native plants rather than many of the invasive non-native plants that dominate our landscape. I am thrilled that this issue is increasingly coming to the forefront and I can even see changes occurring in the retail market. But as a gardener implementation of this philosophy is not without issues. First, the availability of many of these plants is limited and surely the author is not promoting that they be dug from the wild. Sure there are native plant nurseries but they often require people to travel extremely long distances. Secondly, and sadly, many of these non-native invaders are now happily settled in the wild so any changes made by landowners would not reduce their presence or spread. I wish Burrell had done some rating system of the danger these invaders present to the landscape and provided information on where they are now common place versus where we might be able to stop their spread. I know that in the scientific community including Nature Conservancy, there is some acceptance that many of these marauders are now here to stay and we should focus on the worst of the group.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-31 00:00:00 Carey Wolowski Very useful book, especially for someone like me who is relatively new to understanding the importance of using native plants. I was a little surprised to see the recommendation to use trumpet vine (Campsis radicans), which is a native but also wildly difficult to control. They did not offer as an alternative the native Crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) which also has orange trumpet shaped flowers and is loved by hummingbirds and WON'T take over your yard. Still, I came away with a lot of ideas for future gardening. There were just two things that would have made this a 5-star book for me: 1) little maps of the ranges for each of the plants instead of verbal descriptions ("Nova Scotia to Michigan, south to Alabama" is hard for me to picture and 2) a little more information about the invasives beyond their names and ranges.