The first few years I gardened, I bought books. Now I do a lot of research on the web. For growing vegetables, I would recommend any of the books by Eliot Coleman. Other good books I like are Organic Gardening by Geoff Hamilton and The Vegetable Gardeners Bible by Ed Smith. For perennials, one of the first books I bought I really liked and still use it, Caring for perennials by Janet Macunovch. I also like Dryland Gardening by Jennifer Bennett. I don't really grow to many roses anymore but did you know that there is a rose magazine online? You can find it at rosemagazine.com. For pest Identification, I go to the Koppert website. I don't have their information on hand but you can google it. Just some ideas. Hope this helps. Marg

I forgot to mention one. When I grew roses I used the canadianrosesociety.org. I found that one pretty useful. I don't grow them now because they suffer to much damage over the winter from winter kill and then the rabbits eat whats left in the spring. They never really bounce back. Even caging never did much good.

Don't forget, spring catalogs will be in the mailbox in about 2 weeks. Then we'll have pretty pictures to look at.

I frequently borrow gardening books and magazines from our local library. I also have about a kazillion websites bookmarked for pretty pics and I especially like some from the UK, even tho their climate is milder than mine, because I like cottage style gardens.

One site with North American gardens is www.houzz.com - one can view landscaping from various areas of NA, also porches, etc.

There are a lot of good gardening blogs also - one of my favs is a GW poster - her site is http://definingyourhome.blogspot.com/ - again a warmer zone but still lots of nice eye candy and info.

Pretty pics from the Netherlands here: http://www.korfhoeve.nl/ - just click on fotogalerie - no need to speak the language, the pics say it all!

Magazines such as http://www.homesandgardens.com/gardens/ from the UK have lots of garden ideas. Many other magazines also have garden pics online. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now so am just grabbing links as I find them in my bookmarks.

http://yardshare.com/ has quite a few 'real' gardens, some are inspirational.

And sometimes I even like looking at all the plants at http://www.richters.com/ for inspiration.

My apologies for not posting clickable links, I must learn how to do that! :-)

Back when we used to have a Chapters I used to buy anything gardening that was in the bargain bin. Some were written in England and not very applicable but every one of them had good ideas or something I didn't know.

I love my Reader's Digest Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers. There's not much dialogue but tons of pictures. I also like My World of Old Roses by Trevor Griffiths. I have lots of websites bookmarked, mostly reference.

I've made a Chapters wish list and bookmarked websites.

That should keep me busy for a while.

Thanks!!