Heartland Horticulture

Midwestern gardeners are legendary for enduring and outwitting winter, with its heavy snowpack and recurring freezes and thaws. Most of them also reckon with a relatively short growing period. All of them find their horticultural plans complicated by hot, humid summers. In fact, the Midwest deals with four seasons dictating special considerations for plants, pests, and chores!

This article uses the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the Midwest: Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), Nebraska (NE), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), South Dakota (SD), and Wisconsin (WI), an area that basically translates into USDA plant hardiness zones 3 through 6 (though a tiny portion of northern MN is Zone 2, and a tiny portion of southern IL is zone 7).

Gardeners in these states can find specific information on their particular zone at the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/index.html). Also useful is the American Horticultural Society's heat zone map (www.ahs.org/pdfs/05_heat_map.pdf).

Most Midwestern public libraries will need a variety of titles to cover requests from casual home gardeners as well as serious hobbyists. Collections should include basic, introductory guides to both gardening and landscape design. Make sure that books discussing topics like hardscaping, garden structures, and container gardening have appropriate cautions related to frost and weathering a Midwestern winter. Include general plant directories for such essential components as perennials and woody plants, as well as books on specialty gardens.

Take into account that vegetable gardening is experiencing resurgence owing to the weak economy, the food justice movement, and an increase in greener lifestyles. Gardening with native plants (whether for prairie or woodland) is quite popular in the Midwest, as is water gardening and gardening without damaging our wetlands. Generally, titles touting chemical-free, sustainable methods are in vogue. So be sure to bear all this mind when looking for resources that cover your community's zone and the types of gardens popular there. Remember to cover neighboring USDA zones if users are likely to own nearby vacation properties.

Excellent publishers of Midwest gardening books include Cool Springs Press (www.coolspringspress.net) and Lone Pine Publishing (www.lonepinepublishing.com). Timber (www.timberpress.com) and Storey (www.storey.com) produce excellent titles useful in the region as well.

Many Midwestern university presses, particularly Indiana University, University of Minnesota, and University of Wisconsin, publish quality gardening titles as do some state agencies. For example, Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources (www.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/index.html) is noted for publications valuable throughout cold-climate states. Further, check your state's small presses, botanical gardens, and active plant societies. Northern Gardener magazine's bookstore (bit.ly/Uj3wK) is a good source of regional publications.

Weeding a gardening collection should be a continuous process as aptly described in Jeanette Larson's 2008 revision of CREW [Continuous Review, Evaluation, and Weeding]: books with misleading or dated information, a factor particularly important regarding details about pesticides, herbicides, and invasive species since environmental ethics, new research, and updated laws have led to rapid change in these areas.

Titles that have not circulated in the past three years should be reviewed carefully. When weeding, look to discard or replace items that are superseded by a new edition or a better title. Withdraw items that are poorly designed for usefulness, trivial, irrelevant to your users, or readily available through another library branch or in other formats.

In addition to subscriptions to newsletters of plant societies, gardening clubs, and public gardens in your area, consider two quality bimonthly magazines with wide appeal: Chicagoland Gardening: The Magazine for Our Region (www.chicagolandgardening.com) and Northern Gardener: The Magazine of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society (www.northerngardener.org).

Starred titles [*] are essential for most Midwest libraries. [This is the latest in a series of collection development articles focused on regional gardening; see also Brian R. Thompson's “Planting the Pacific Northwest,” LJ 12/05, p. 83–85; Phillip Oliver's “Deep in the Heart of Gardening,” LJ 12/06, p. 79–81; Eboni A. Francis's “North by Northeast,” LJ 12/07, p. 80–82; and John Charles, Shelley Mosley, & Sandra Van Winkle's “The Desert Shall Bloom,” LJ 12/08, p. 70–72.—Ed.]