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thecandlelightlibrary 's review for:
Grow Your Own Tea: The Complete Guide to Cultivating, Harvesting, and Preparing
by Christine Parks, Susan M. Walcott
Thank you to NetGalley and Timber Press for sending me a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
Grow Your Own Tea is an in-depth informative guide about the Camellia plant and how to grow and harvest it for your own homemade tea. If you’re looking for a growing guide to turning your home garden into a tea garden with a variety of plants to make your own tea blends, this is not that book. Instead, this book is geared towards those who are unfamiliar with growing their own Camellia plants for tea harvest and would like to get started. I particularly enjoyed learning about Camellia plant ecology and contemporary tea growers in America.
However, I think the biggest issue I had with this book was its organization in the first section (A World of Tea). I think this section would be much more effective if it started out with who the authors are, how this book was researched and put together, and then about the Camellia plant before going into the history of tea and contemporary tea growing.
It seemed like the majority of this book was geared towards those who are unfamiliar with the entire tea process (such as that tea comes from the Camellia plant) and therefore would be unfamiliar with the authors themselves. So, more time spent on the authors’ combined expertise and how they are able to write this book would have been appreciated. However, there were several instances within the book where it felt like the authors were talking to their friends and the reader was entering halfway through the conversation. I don’t think these audiences are interchangeable and the authors need to stay consistent and pick one. As one example, during the first part of the book, the authors frequently refer to results of a survey they did without actually describing the survey itself.
Overall, this read like a coffee table book to me (rather than a reference/general nonfiction book) and while I can now definitely say Camellia plants are not in my immediate gardening future, I did enjoy learning about them. Thank you again to NetGalley and Timber Press for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.
Grow Your Own Tea is an in-depth informative guide about the Camellia plant and how to grow and harvest it for your own homemade tea. If you’re looking for a growing guide to turning your home garden into a tea garden with a variety of plants to make your own tea blends, this is not that book. Instead, this book is geared towards those who are unfamiliar with growing their own Camellia plants for tea harvest and would like to get started. I particularly enjoyed learning about Camellia plant ecology and contemporary tea growers in America.
However, I think the biggest issue I had with this book was its organization in the first section (A World of Tea). I think this section would be much more effective if it started out with who the authors are, how this book was researched and put together, and then about the Camellia plant before going into the history of tea and contemporary tea growing.
It seemed like the majority of this book was geared towards those who are unfamiliar with the entire tea process (such as that tea comes from the Camellia plant) and therefore would be unfamiliar with the authors themselves. So, more time spent on the authors’ combined expertise and how they are able to write this book would have been appreciated. However, there were several instances within the book where it felt like the authors were talking to their friends and the reader was entering halfway through the conversation. I don’t think these audiences are interchangeable and the authors need to stay consistent and pick one. As one example, during the first part of the book, the authors frequently refer to results of a survey they did without actually describing the survey itself.
Overall, this read like a coffee table book to me (rather than a reference/general nonfiction book) and while I can now definitely say Camellia plants are not in my immediate gardening future, I did enjoy learning about them. Thank you again to NetGalley and Timber Press for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.