2 comments about Hostas and Other Shade-Loving Plants.

1. This bood was a tremendous help to me in selecting plants for my Hosta garden and shade garden. This book helped with my knowledge and selection of plants at my local nursery. My garden looks great!



2. Limited information about Hostas in this poorly named book. It is better described as a beginners guide to shade gardening, with some reference to Hostas.

   The book contains: 83 pages on general shade gardening, garden design, seasonal garden observations, soil preparation, and plant propagation. 15 pages on Hostas (17 species and 37 cultivars), each receiving one small paragraph of information. 30 pages about 119 other shade plants, again each receiving one small paragraph of information. 1 page listing plant suppliers and 1 page listing societies.

   Book has a 4 page index. Both cover pages contain a paper fold to act as a page place holder (when you put the book down, you can find where you left off - a nice touch).

   Photography is great. Images are clear, colorful, and show interesting plants. Most pictures contain a comment line that properly identifies the plant to species or variety.

   The book is not a great reference manual on Hostas. It merely introduces the beginning gardener to shade plants and describes the more common Hostas. Information is solid and helpful, but there is not a lot of depth.

   If you're looking for a lightweight introduction to shade gardening - then this is a very good choice.

   It's a thin book that is priced around $[price]. Overall, it's a bargin!

No comments about The Plant-by-Plant Perennial Care Manual: What to Do When to Do It: From Planting, Staking, and Pruning to Mulching, Dividing, and Propagating More Than 200 Popular Plants.

1 comments about Perennials: Practical Advice and the Science Behind It (Question & Answer Series, 3).

1. Nice book for the North areas. Good book for a beginner but with out color pictures you may need another book too.

1 comments about Perennial Garden Plants: Or the Modern Florilegium.

1. 'Perennial Garden Plants' by Graham Stuart Thomas is a classic gardening reference book. Reknowned for his lyrical prose and encyclopedic knowledge, the now deceased Graham Stuart Thomas was one of the world's great gardening giants and this fact is clearly demonstrated in his treatise on perennials.
   
   'Perennial Garden Plants' is an amazingly through listing of perennial plants by genus, providing each one with concise plant statistics (i.e. height & spread, hardyness, bloom time, etc) followed by a short description of the plant species along with his wonderfully overbearing thoughts to the beauty and uses of the plant. Furthermore, some plant entries are enriched by quotes from other gardening legends such as Gertrude Jekyll, William Robinson and others, adding yet more opinions on the delights (and distress) of certain perennial plants. To the serious gardener, having G. S. Thomas' opinion on his favorite perennial plants is alone worth purchasing this book.
   
   However, it is worth mentioning that 'Perennial Garden Plants' is not the best gardening book on the market. Last revised in 1990, some of the cultivar entries are out of date, the meager selection of photos are dated and not really useful, and better, more through books have appeared on the market (most notably Allan M. Armitage's 'Herbaceous Perennial Plants').
   
   If G. S. Thomas was alive and well to expand and update this book with new plant entries and more (and better) color photos, I would give it 5 stars. As it stands, though, I find this book to be useful mainly as a cross-reference with other texts that are more current. Nevertheless, I still cherish the delightful taste of G. S. Thomas' opinion on perennial garden plants as evidenced in this book to be invaluable.

No comments about Smart Guide: Home Landscaping (Smart Guide).

3 comments about Plant Partners: Creative Plant Associations for Perennials.

1. I can't believe no one has yet to review this book. I find myself going through the book to look up a particular plant combination and then spending at least an hour paging through the book all over again. Anna Pavord's humo(u)rful writing makes for an easy read.

   This book is a definite MUST HAVE for anyone, beginner, amateur or professional (even if they wouldn't admit to having it on their shelf) who is interested in combining plants. I started using it about a year ago, and the results are fantastic - these combinations work. I especially like the attention to normally overlooked plants such as euphorbias,violets, and columbines and I am dying to try some of the more exotic combinations.

   The featured plant trios each contain a "star" plant and two companions. Each of the stars are also listed in the back with alternative partners. The book is organized with gradations from spring-summer-fall and includes bulbs as well as perennials and a few annuals. Missing are shrubs, roses, and climbers, but we can't have everything in one book, can we?

   The main critique I have (if possible I would have deducted 1/2 a star) is that the cultural information is decidedly limited - beginners will need to supplement this book with a good all-around perennial book. The pictures are drop-dead gorgeous and alternative colors and specific named varieties are also given.

   My advice - buy this book now and you can still get these plants in before spring really gets rolling.




2. This book is very informative and a pleasure to read. The author is both knowledgable and opinionated and even if one doesn't always agree with her, her humor is very funny; dry, understated, and British. Most of the plants she mentions are pictured somewhere in the book, and where the picture isn't on the same page as the description, the page number to locate the picture is in the margin right next to the written description. A great job and an excellent book!



3. `plant partners' by leading horticultural journalist, Anna Pavord, loudly proclaimed on the cover as the author of the best-selling `The Tulip' is comparable to culinary journalist Michael Ruhlman's writing a mass market paperback (probably from Workman or Chronicle Books) on foods which go together. In both cases, the authors' success with `high journalism' is no guarantee that their more pedestrian books will be worthy. Fortunately, like Ruhlman's `Charcuterie', Anna Pavord's more popular efforts like this volume are a cut above the average oversized book crafted to do well on the bargain table.
   
   In fact, Ms. Pavord's book is so well accomplished, the average gardener may actually find it a bit dense. The first thing that stands out is the fact that not only does our scholarly Ms. Pavord use the formal Latin scientific names for all flowers (which I heartily endorse), she also uses these scientific names as the section headings. One has to go to the individual sections and look at the pictures of the flowers to be sure you know of what species she is talking.
   
   Now many Latin names have become familiar enough to a dedicated gardener that this may not be a big thing to a true amateur gardener. Even I recognize with no prompting the fact that `Allium' is the name of the lilly genus and that `Hemerocallus' is the genus name for daylillies. Even easier are the genus names `Hosta', `Iris', and `Phlox'. This still leaves a fairly large number of pretty arcane names for the average occasional gardener.
   
   My other major complaint about this book is that while the primary subject is the matter of pairing plants which go together well, there are very few pictures of the highlighted pairs, as they actually appear in the garden. There are wonderful pictures of many plants, but mostly they are `head shots' which are about as artificial as a photographic portrait taken in a studio.
   
   Even with these two hurdles, this is a really worthy book, worth the effort needed to work with these stylistic choices. The very best aspect of the book is that the pairings are organized by season, and within season, offering pairs of plants that come together into their best presentation garb, whether that be flowers or foliage.
   
   My second favorite thing about the book is that it does not limit itself to either annuals or perennials. It does not even limit itself to our most familiar plant phyla, as it includes several ferns, which are probably ignored by the average gardener.
   
   My third favorite aspect of the book is that in spite of the far ranging variety of plants, it still manages to hit upon a few of my favorites, some of which are actually in my garden at this very moment. It is no surprise that my favorite here is the Tulip cultivar, `Princess Irene', of which I have planted hundreds.
   
   Unlike cooking, which one can (and must) do throughout the year, gardening has those lovely / dreadful lulls in the winter (especially in my Zone 5 and in the author's England), where all one has to fuel the gardening gene is the seed catalogues and books such as the one we have here.
   
   This is the kind of book you want to read through from cover to cover over the Christmas holidays with a notepad and pencil (or laptop) in hand, to record ideas for the coming spring. It will not yield much for the quick lookup. You will need to ponder this material and use it to fuel your imagination and keep that green thumb fertilized during the cold months. The book's value for this use is multiplied thrice over by the fact that Ms. Pavord knows how to write! She keeps you engaged while giving you a tour of facinating possibilities for the coming growing season.

No comments about Alan Bloom's Hardy Perennials: New Plants Raised and Introduced by a Lifelong Plantsman.

No comments about The Plant-by-Plant Perennial Care Manual: What to Do and When to Do It: From Planting, Staking, and Pruning to Mulching, Dividing, and Propagating More Than 200 Popular Plants.

1 comments about 1001 Perennials.

1. Contains great pictures and information about beautiful flowers. A must for every "green thumb" gardener.

No comments about All about perennials.