Sunset's Complete Garden Book

The majority of the “How To” gardening books in the Botany and Horticulture library are based on gardening in the mid-Atlantic region because these are the growing conditions our horticultural staff must deal with when growing plants outdoors in the Washington D.C. area. However, our library also collects on the history of American gardening and that’s where the Sunset books come in. In 1928, Lane Publishing Company decided to focus their Sunset book series on Westerners, including the garden series. Sunset magazine and their book publications are iconic in the American West, beginning 1898 and named for the Sunset limited train, which ran from New Orleans to San Francisco.

Their publication, “The Western Garden Book,” has exceeded 5.5 million copies. Our library has the 1940 edition, which is the sixth printing of the 1939 edition called The Complete Garden book which started the title success. Sunset’s The Complete Garden book has many chapters you find in modern day gardening books, such as “How to have good soil,” a gardening “What to do this month,” and “Bloom calendar” which allows for all year flowering of your plants. The book includes in the back an extensive "encyclopedia" of plants that you can grow in your western landscape and is a time stamp of what gardening was like over 80 years ago.