I love this take on vegetable gardening. It always seems so straighforward and uninspired, and Kelly Smith Trimble takes it into interesting spaces that I found exciting to consider.

I've been looking for a gardening book that will help me to create a vegetable garden from scratch. And I thought this book will be the one.

If you're living in the US, the book will be amazingly helpful to select and integrate which kind of vegetables you can plant, based on your area and climate. It includes information about complementary plants, that will contribute to a reduce consumption of reasources. As well, it offers suggestions on garden planning, so your garden will be, not only, useful, but beautiful. Some of the designs are gorgeous. Honestly, I considered renting an urban garden, just to be able to recreate on of those designs.

Unfortunately, the book has been narrowed to an specific country (even though, it has such a pletora of climates), which forces you to investigate what can you plant and when, considering your regional climate caracteristics. And, from an european point of view, most people don't have enough space to have an artistic garden, or a plot at all. So, if you're considering this book for your balcony garden, I believe there are better titles you can read.

Overall, the book covers its purpose, if you're completely new to gardening and you have time and space to invest in it. Please, consider your region whenever you're looking for a gardening book, it'll make your life easier.

A cool, unique take on the usual vegetable gardening guide, this book is full of interesting and fun ideas as well as good information.

Very informative book that is full of a lot of useful information. With books like this, I do an initial read-through and then keep for reference. There are lots of great tips to come back to again and again!

Need a beautiful guide to help you with your gardening? Read this book.
The advice with pictures are informative and fun. It takes the stress out of gardening and shows we all can do it and make it enjoyable. A book to reread for sure.

The Creative Vegetable Gardener gives you guidance on gardening and thinking outside the box of conventional vegetable growing.

We can all be adventurous, imaganitive, and unconventional in how we manage our gardens.

What fun.

Very informative book. Full of a lot of useful information. This book will also be very useful for future reference

This book is really fun for an intermediate or advanced gardener ready to move beyond traditional garden designs. If you are ready to try something creative, you will gain plenty of ideas. There are visual examples from gardeners around the United States. I love the tons of sustainable gardening tips interwoven throughout the book. My favorite theme of this book was the embracing of joy in the art of gardening.

This book wasn't for me. I can't say it wasn't informative as it really is, however maybe it just isn't my 'style'.

I'm however grateful I was given the opportunity to read this arc.

Great Book!!!

The Creative Vegetable Gardener is a great way to expand your knowledge of growing vegetables. This book will inspire with all of the great information and beautiful pictures. Kelly Smith Trimble starts this book off with "Grow for Joy", which is such an inspiring way to start. I love a book that tells me to rethink the rules - that means it is giving me new ideas.

There are so many interesting spaces to grow a garden in my yard ,I was so glad to hear that it does not have to be relegated to the backyard. Choose vegetables for flavor, scent and color - I would not have thought about scent. Confusing pest sounds like a great idea to try from this book. There is also a section on how to plant and support tomatoes when you plant them closer together than recommended.

This will be my reference book now and in the future for planting vegetables.

I received this book from Storey publishing as an ARC, and I am so glad I did!

This beautiful book is written so that it can be read with ease, but it also invokes a desire for creativity and nourishment. The author explains major garden concepts in an easy to understand way and gives many real life examples. She explains the rules so that they can be broken and draws from many other cultures to move beyond the mono crop garden that is the typical American vegetable garden. I am excited to implement some of the tips and concepts that I learned from this book in my garden this year!

This was an interesting book to dip into, but I didn't find it as helpful as I thought as I have a tiny garden, particularly compared to the author's, and would find a lot of the planting suggestions very hard to replicate.
The author is also obviously writing for an American audience so some of the names and ideas didn't translate very well to the backgarden of an inner city terraced house in northern UK!
Thank you to netgalley and storey publishing for an advance copy of this book.

I selected this book because we are interested in including some edibles in our landscaped beds in addition to our raised beds designated for vegetables. The author did a nice job explaining how to begin this process, even including some pairing of plants that work well together. The photos included in this book were particularly beautiful and inspiring with regard to my purpose for reading. I especially appreciated the beds that were free form and made the most of the contours of the property on which they were located. I picked up some good gardening tips, and ideas for using some plants in more creative ways. I wasn't a fan of the sections within the book that felt more new-age related, and just skipped over them. Nor was I a fan that the book included info on growing cannabis.

I am grateful to have received a complimentary copy of The Creative Vegetable Gardener from Storey Publishing via NetGalley without obligation. All opinions expressed here are my own.

It feels like spring here in the southeast U.S. We had temps in the high 70s and even hit the 80s at the end of the week. I can't wait to start digging in the ground, but the memory of the late freeze we experienced last spring has me holding back. So instead I read about gardening.

I've read a few books from Storey Publishing, but this one is my favorite. I grew up with more traditional gardening and farming practices - first with the field of rows and then square-foot gardening. But at my house, those methods don't really work. So The Creative Vegetable Gardener is the perfect book for me.

I live in a subdivision with no HOA (so thankful I insisted on buying in a non-HOA neighborhood). I have a lot of trees so there isn't a lot of sun (I rarely run my AC in the summertime). Plus my property slopes pretty badly. There was already some existing landscaping of shrubs and the dreaded English Ivy. Because of erosion, the heavy shade, and to be honest my lack of care the little bit of lawn I had in the front yard was mostly weeds. Last year, I decided to embrace a rapidly growing movement of going grassless. I outlined potential growing spaces based on sun availability and started to work on the soil in that space. I mulched the part that will be pathways. While I planted a few things that I picked up for cheap or free as experiments (testing soil condition and sunlight), I wasn't expecting much from it. I picked my first tomato on the first day of Autumn. With my soil a little better, this year I'm focusing on planting. I already have a few cold-hardy plant seeds in the ground (sugar peas, beets, lettuce, spinach, and radishes) and I'm so looking forward to spring plant sales.

So reading The Creative Vegetable Gardener right now is perfect. I want to embrace the controlled chaos of a more natural garden and that is largely the focus of Trimble's book. While a few other books and websites I've read mention this way of intermixing your garden there really isn't much good information about how to do it. That's why I was so happy with Trimble's book.

She talks about so many alternative ways of growing plants in her book. Did you know that there are people who determine when to plant and harvest by the phases of the moon instead of the solar calendar and seasons?

She also mentions the many ways you can design your garden. I have a wavy snake pattern since it is my front yard, close to the road, and the established landscape was already in curves. This is the control aspect of my desire for more natural gardening. In some places, the garden bed is no wider than two feet though I tried for three feet in most areas. But traditional row planting will never work. So I'm glad she mention intensive planting (growing more densely in a smaller space). I knew people did it but I wasn't sure really how to in order also to have success. She discusses a little about how the seed packets get their directions for spacing and how it doesn't always apply to home gardens.

I'm really glad I read about that before I planted my lettuce seeds. According to the spacing directions on the seed packet I might have had space for 3 heads of lettuce. I might still need to do some thinning as the plants grow but at least I felt comfortable sowing seeds a little more densely.

I'm really not good with plants but I enjoy trying and Trimble reminds us that play is an important part of life. As adults, we often give too little time to play. For me, that is what gardening is. I love being outside, but I've never been one to just sit in a chair. So I get to be active and productive while enjoying the sun and wind and sounds of nature.

While the title says Vegetable Gardener, Trimble also talks about cut flower gardens, herb gardens, and dye gardens (there's even instructions for a DIY dye project included). If you are looking for adding more outdoor fun to your life while also providing beauty to your home and food for your table, then pick up this book. The information provided will give you a good start and the full color images will provide plenty of inspiration.

My review is published at Girl Who Reads - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2023/02/the-creative-vegetable-gardener-by.html

THE CREATIVE VEGETABLE GARDENER by Kelly Smith Trimble lives up to its title, being packed with numerous beautiful pictures and imaginative ideas. For example, Smith Trimble explores unusually shaped gardens and also looks at a multitude of ways to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. Suggestions for growing herbs and flowers are included. Plus, she showcases unusual vegetables like round, orange colored eggplant in addition to the more elongated, purplish one we all know. With sample chapter titles like "Finding Your Garden Style," "Whole-Garden Thinking," and "Embracing Organized Chaos," this book truly provides "60 Ways to Cultivate Joy, Playfulness, and Beauty along with a Bounty of Food." THE CREATIVE VEGETABLE GARDENER is sure to enrich and delight new and experienced gardeners.

Good reference book for gardeners. Gives some good out-of-the-box gardening ideas. Some of the information seemed a little hippy-dippy for my taste, but mostly sound advice for new gardeners.

Thanks to NetGalley for the copy I received in exchange for my honest opinions.

A huge thanks to the publisher for my complimentary copy and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

This is a beautiful book for those just starting gardening and to those that have been gardening for a while. It's jam packed with helpful hints and tips and incredible picturesque images to inspire you to garden. I absolutely love it and recommend it to everyone that wants to start their gardening journey or want to discover what makes a garden a beautiful place. You should get it and read it.

A comprehensive book with tips and recommendations on how to become more creative in the garden.

I enjoyed the pictures, they inspired me to try new things this growing season.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this arc in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Is it time to rethink your vegetable garden? This book might be the book for you. Creative Vegetable Garden is encouraging the reader to look at your garden in a new way, from the set-up of your planters to which plants to plant together. I love the idea of changing away from the rectangular shapes of most gardens to using a spiral. I never thought about planting things so close together to get the use of the space. Nor have I considered planting flowers with the vegetables, but Trimble recommends packing your garden with different plants and vegetables to get the most out of your space. Great book for reworking your garden or starting with a new space.

As much as I liked this book, the formatting of the advanced ebook made it difficult to keep going. Random text would be put in the middle of a paragraph which would continue on the next page, or not at all in a couple of places.

Such an inspiring book! I never would have thought beyond the same old same old garden. This book really shows how to think outside the norm and how to thrive doing it.