Not all Australian gardening guides are created equal GARDENING BIRDSCAPING AUSTRALIAN GARDENS. By George Adams. Penguin. $59.99.
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVE GARDEN: A Practical Guide. By Angus Stewart and A.B. Bishop. Murdoch Books. $49.99.
AUSTRALIAN PLANTS FOR CANBERRA REGION GARDENS. By Australian Native Plants Society Canberra Region Inc. $30.
Reviewer: IAN FRASER C anberrans have long had a love affair with growing Australian native plants, even though our gluey clay soils and annual temperature range of up to 50 degrees can make gardening a challenging proposition. The trick, of course, is in recognising that thousands of species have evolved with the conditions, and in choosing accordingly. 
The Australian Native Plants Society (ANPS) - formerly the Society for Growing Australian Plants - has long been a champion of growing indigenous species for their hardiness, their water-thrift, their value to wildlife and their unique nature.
It is a way of saying, if only to ourselves, "Yes, I'm glad to be Australian and I'm happy to say so."
Way back in 1973 it produced the first edition of Australian Plants for Canberra Gardens - it was one of the first books I bought when I arrived here a few years later. It has evolved steadily since then, but the most recent (fourth) edition appeared 14 years ago, so this new and enlarged version is very welcome, especially with its broader base, noted by the addition of region to the title, and the subtitle "and other cool climate areas". It is focused on our needs and problems, and a great deal of thought has gone into it. There is a concise but comprehensive introduction to designing your garden, choosing your plants, including a critical pre-purchase examination, how to prepare soils, maintain plants through the year and deal with garden threats. The bulk of the book comprises a well-annotated list of nearly 1000 plant species, each one illustrated and cunningly coded to describe its needs with regard to light, soil, frost and drought hardiness, flowering time, bird attraction and size. Frankly, I don't see how a cold-climate gardener could be without it.
The same could not, I'm afraid, be said of at least one of the other two titles, though both are handsome and weighty works, oozing beautiful photographs and sketches - indeed, they are a pleasure to skip through.
I have a strong attachment to Adams' book, as I still have the now-battered 1980 first edition of Birdscaping Your Garden, containing the birthday card from my parents which accompanied it. However, as the new edition is produced by a different publisher, this history has been ignored and it is presented as a new work. Indeed the current edition has 2 times the number of pages of the original, and they are larger, so clearly there is a lot more information. The key information from the older edition has been retained - what birds need from a garden and how to provide it, in terms of shelter, food and water, in particular, including how to build and install nest boxes.
Adams has built upon the original, with brief but welcome sections on grasses and flowering herbs, attracting butterflies, and encouragement to think beyond your backyard into local parks and streetscapes. So far, so very good, though this important section is still not much longer than it was in the 1980 version.
There is now an added 117-page bird directory with a two-page spread on each of 55 common and mostly larger birds from across the country. Aside from the questionable value of it - anyone interested enough to plan a garden for birds will already have one or more of the excellent field guides available - the problem is in the breadth of the approach. Only about half these species are likely to occur in a Canberra garden, for instance, and the same could be said for pretty much anywhere in Australia, though Sydney, unsurprisingly, would score better. And, finally, there is an annotated and illustrated list of 300-odd plant species with bird-attracting potential - though in truth that could be said of pretty much any Australian plant. The problem, of course, is that the majority of them would not grow in Canberra, or indeed in any one given place in Australia. My preference would have been to see Adams apply his undoubted skills and experience to enlarging the first general section on designing wildlife-friendly gardens, and directing readers to more regional-specific plant guides, such as the previous title.
And that is exactly the problem with Stewart and Bishop's most attractive opus - it tries to do too much, and it is pretty well impossible for it to be the practical guide that the subtitle promises. We are introduced to some natural regions of Australia, meet a few selected inspiring native gardens (including Ben and Ros Walcott's beautiful one in Canberra), learn some basic gardening principles, and meet 150 attractive native plants (for the whole of Australia, compared with the ANPS list of 1000 for Canberra alone).
Have a look at all three titles by all means - they all deserve it - but if you're a practical gardener with room in your shelf or budget for just one, it has to be the ANPS book.
Ian Fraser is a local naturalist, broadcaster, natural history blogger and author, whose most recent book is Australian Bird Names: A Complete Guide.