Book Review: Propagation Specialist Guide – Raising New Plants for the Home and Garden

The Propagation Specialist Guide by David Squire provides a wealth of easy-to-follow advice for success with a wide range of plants. Most gardeners are looking for way to increase their plants by sowing seeds, taking cuttings, or dividing existing clumps. Many propagation methods are easy, need only a few pieces of equipment, and are easy for anyone to do.

Home Gardener’s Propagation is the essential guide to raising new plants for the home and garden. Buying individual plants can be expensive – but raising your own saves money and gives lots of gardening satisfaction. Every aspect of the art of propagation is covered, from the philosophy behind creating plants to the easiest species to grow to the best materials and equipment. All the major methods receive well-illustrated, in-depth, and easy to follow explanations, including seeds and cuttings, division and layering, and budding and grafting, and there’s a handy, at-a-glance A to Z listing of ideal propagation plants for the home and garden. Both novice and more experienced gardeners will turn to this invaluable reference again and again.

We received this book from the publisher for our honest review.

Our Book Review:

Propagation is one of those books that will stay on a gardener’s reference shelf for a very long time. While most people know that plants can be multiplied, many don’t know just how easy it can be. Author David Squire does an amazing job of leading the beginner through the steps needed to increase the numbers of plants in one’s gardens.

The book is charmingly illustrated with colorful line drawings, rather than photographs, and this emphasizes the steps described, making it easier to understand the instructions. Even the table of contents is well-defined with colorful boxes for each section.

The author opens the book with notes about measurements, seasons, plant names, and the philosophy of raising plants. Equipment and materials are listed and then the detailed instructions begin: sowing vegetables; sowing seeds in a greenhouse; root, leaf-bud, stem, leaf, and cane cuttings; cacti and succulents; dividing and layering; bulbs, corms, tubers, and rhizomes; layering shrubs and vines; layering houseplants; air-layering a rubber plant; runners and plantlets; and, budding and grafting. The book finishes with a full A-Z section of specific plants and how to propagate them.

This book is well-written, easy to understand, and nicely designed, this book is a must for anyone wishing to increase their plant inventory.