FIRST PRINTED IN 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, Ladies' Southern Florist by Mary C. Rion was the first book to provide gardeners in the South with a comprehensive list of ornamentals - trees, shrubs, flowers, bulbs, and roses - ideally suited to the southern climate. This small but pivotal work is equally significant as the earliest garden book in the South written by a woman. Prior to its publication, southern gardeners had to turn to English garden books or guides geared to northern gardeners, which offered little in the way of advice on growing plants in a region characterized by mild...