Product Description

Packed with more than 1,000 plants illustrated in full color, Perennials is an inspiring handbook to help you identify, choose, and grow your favorite varieties. Discover at a glance the full range of perennials available. Each entry combines a plant portrait with a concise botanical description, plus cultivation and propagation details. Helpful symbols indicate preferred growing conditions and cold hardiness. If you want a specific leaf or flower color in a particular season, the Plant Catalog will offer you the perfect specimen. All the essential considerations such as selecting a perennial plant, choosing a site and preparing the ground, watering, mulching, feeding, weeding, pest control, and transplanting are clearly explained. Propagation methods, form sowing seeds to division, stem-tip cuttings, and root cuttings, are also given. Whether you are planting a new garden or seeking new features of interest for an established one, Perennials is your indispensable, portable gardening companion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1050727 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.com Review
This stunning reference book is as gorgeous on the coffee table as it is handy in the garden. Perennials provides detailed information about this enormous category, and while it's hard not to love everything about this title, the most useful feature is its thoughtful organization. Divided up first into areas of "tall," "medium," and "short" plants, each area is then subdivided into season of blooming. For gardeners looking to fill a specific need such as "summer ground cover" or "autumn background," this arrangement allows you to flip right to a particular section with ease. Go deeper into each category, and you discover the nitty-gritty detail of each specific plant--under "tall, summer," you'll find a multipage spread of many different irises, while lovely primroses are featured in "short, spring." Each of these smaller subgroupings follow the same color wheel--if you're in the market for cheery yellow blooms, you'll have all your season-and-height-appropriate choices within pages of each other. The "Winter" section includes a handful of plants that are especially appealing year-round, such as sturdy ivies and bright foliage plants. This is also the section that focuses on house-appropriate plants like African violets, spider plants, and flowering bananas. Colors are bright and photos are clear and detailed. With this book at hand, choosing new plants will be quite a treat. Make sure to include the "how to use this book" in your first skim through--the code for various symbols is deciphered there, and you'll want to remember these, or at least mark the page. --Jill Lightner

Customer Reviews

Beautiful encyclopedia of perennials
As a librarian and book reviewer with a speciality in gardening literature, I see a lot of perennials books come and go. The strength of this new title lies in the super DK photography and interesting arrangement by use in the perennial border - not a strict A-Z dictionary of plants. I found the selection of plants both comprehensive and up-to-date in terms of including new cultivars. This would be an excellent choice for someone seeking a current and beautiful encyclopedia of perennials.

Gardeners catalog
I was very pleased with this book, it is truly amazing in that it not only lists plants in their flowering type, height and flowering season but in color too eg: Want to make a Yellow,Blue or Red flowering bed?

Great if you want to establish a herbacious border.

The clarity of the 1000's of photographs is outstanding. Each plant has beside it's photo a detailed description of habit, cultivation and propagation.

If there is to be only one book in your collection on perenials it should be this one.