Booklist
Schenk, author of three other horticultural books, points out that traces of moss have been found in 400-million-year-old fossils. There are 15,000 living moss species, 1,200 of them in North America. Schenk defines the varieties of moss plants and follows with chapters on moss gardens in Japan (a garden in Kyoto was designed in the fourteenth century) and on gardens in Europe and North America. There are chapters on mossy rocks, moss carpets, alpine gardens, growing moss in containers, and the use of moss as ground covers beneath bonsai trees. Schenk lists approximatety 60 plants alphabetically by genus, with advice on propagating, cultivating, and transplanting. Includes 97 color photographs. George Cohen
Country Living Gardener
This handsome guide, written by an ever-practical expert on shade gardening, "tells almost as much about the mechanics of moss gardening as the Kama Sutra does about dancing."
Ingram
Mosses tell an ancient success story of longevity as well as dispersion; they appear in fossils 400 million years old and total 15,000 species from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Landscaping expert George Schenk shows how to propagate and cultivate various mosses for rock gardens, as a lawn substitute, and for use in miniature gardens or containers. 97 color photos.
Library of Congress
This handsomely illustrated and thorough treatise is far more than a manual on planting and maintaining moss. The book aims to be of practical help in understanding some of the common mosses, lichens, and liverworts, and in distinguishing them from the familiar non-mosses such as Irish, Scottish, and Spanish "moss." There are descriptions for transplanting, propagating, and growing them as ground covers, in container gardens, and for bonsai arrangements. Exhilarating to gardeners and non-gardeners alike are the fine photographs, ranging from panoramas of moss carpets and temple gardens in Japan to close-ups of sea lettuce-like mosses and spore capsules. George Schenk writes that he is primarily interested in garden art rather than science, but he offers enough of each to inspire broader exploration of these minute, but certainly not minor, plants.
