Product Description

For every gardener who has hesitated over plant pairings or wondered if an array of favorite plants will work well together in the garden, Designer Plant Combinations inspires and delights with professionally designed combinations using just two to six plants. Here are the secrets to combining French lavender with California fuchsia; prairie coneflower with hummingbird mint; and tall purple moor grass with dwarf Korean lilac in a small garden bed. The dramatic effects are marvelous.

Author Scott Calhoun traveled the country searching for the freshest, most exciting plant groupings. He visited the gardens of top designers from coast to coast and chose more than 100 combinations to include in his photographic celebration. Riots of complementary colors, masses of grasses, foliage spectacles in extraordinary shades of green and purple, and height variations as arresting as city skylines are all featured in these exciting gardens, each one an intimate self-contained glimpse of a larger garden.

Rather than complete garden designs, these combinations are small, understandable pieces that demystify the design process for home gardeners. The innovative ensembles are invitations to try plants together in fresh, inventive ways. The combinations are perfect as embellishments to or reinventions of existing gardens. A favorite pairing can be the beginning of a larger garden design, or a five-plant grouping might be all that is necessary to fill in a small urban garden. The possibilities are as varied as the gardener's imagination.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32679 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781603420778
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Scott Calhoun is an award-winning garden designer and the author of two previous books, Chasing Wildflowers and Yard Full of Sun, for which he won the American Horticultural Society's book award in 2006. Formerly the "Garden Expert" for Tucson's CBS affiliate, Calhoun now writes a weekly garden design column for The Arizona Daily Star and the Western states plant notes column for Country Gardens magazine. He's also a regular contributor to Sunset and Horticulture magazines. His Web site is www.zonagardens.com.

Customer Reviews

Inspiring handbook for perennial addicts
First of all the pictures--by the best garden photographers around. I doubt you will ever find such high quality reproduction or gorgeous pictures in such a convenient and incredibly inexpensive format. Second: diversity--what an extraordinary range of gardens, from cactus and desert stark to lush woodlands and of course classic English style herbaceous extravaganzas. By carving a manageable vignette out of what are often extremely complicated gardens, Scott makes it possible for the reader to duplicate the scene. More importantly, he shows how combos work: groundcovers melding together, focal point plants, see through designs--some nuts and bolts beautifully demonstrated. As well as being a very handy handbook, this is a valuable benchmark of garden design as practiced in America today: he's picked gardens from California to the east coast and everywhere in between to sample the range of outstanding garden design comprising the American perennial garden. The world is awash with mercurial computer images that constantly disappear and flicker away: books like this are monuments that capture the moment. They will never be replaced by websites or digitization.

Scott has produced four stunning and very different books in as many years. He is a force to be reckoned with: I don't know anyone who wouldn't be beguiled by the pictures and enlightened by the text. You will be delighted to own this one!

Beautiful combinations!
Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (12/08)


I decided to read "Designer Plant Combinations" because I recently moved into a new house, just finished putting in a lawn, and now want to do some much needed landscaping. I am pretty new to the whole gardening thing and had no idea which plants would look good or work well together. When I saw Scott Calhoun's book showing 105 gardens each using six plants or less I thought that I would surely get some inspiration, and I was correct!

One of Calhoun's main goals in writing "Designer Plant Combinations" as stated in the introduction "is to simplify and demystify some of the planting design process by breaking it into comprehensible chunks of two to six plants. These chunks, while not a full-blown garden design, are a way to start using plants in your garden in an inventive fashion." (p.11)

The book is divided into six sections: Perennial Partners, Masses of Grasses, Annual Acquaintances, Accent Plant Associates, Ground Cover Groupies, and Buddies for Woodies. One of my favorites in the Perennial section is the "Dry-Garden Harmony" which combines `PS Harlan' bush clematis, `Maynard's Gold' yarrow, Star of Persia, and Alpine Skullcap. It is such a beautiful combination of blue, yellow, and purples.

Each page in the book gives the plants' names, pictures, and then a few sentences of information about each including the size that the plant grows to and the hardiness zone that the plant is appropriate for. On the opposite page is a larger photograph showing the combination design of all of the plants together. Also included on each page is a designer tip.

Due to the hardiness zone that I am in (Zone 4, bordering on Zone 3) there are a lot of combinations that I am not able to use, but I liked looking at the pictures and learning about the different plants. I did find one simple combination that I am definitely going to incorporate into my landscaping and that is the `Blue Spire' Russian Sage and the `Coronation Gold' yarrow. I love the bright color combination and I especially love that it says that "if there was ever a great combo for the beginning gardener, this is it; success is very nearly guaranteed with these two hardy and reliable plants." (p. 62) Just what I need!

"Designer Plant Combinations" provides many pretty and unique combinations of plants that are not overly complicated. The photographs are inspiring and the information provided alongside is very useful. I recommend this book to anyone looking for new planting ideas, both to experienced gardeners and to inexperienced gardeners alike.

Landscape Design by Section
For either a backyard gardener or a professional landscape architect, this book has something to offer. The author presents over 100 different groupings of plants that will look well together. The photos of the various gardens demonstrate what the finished landscape will look like.

The concept presented is one of piecemeal design by section. The drill is to put together a plan for the garden a section at a time. For example an area that requires a ground cover could be designed by studying the photos in the ground cover area.

There are a number of tips throughout the book about garden design and gardening in general that the reader will find helpful.

There however is room for improvement in the presentation of the material. Areas of the garden that are in shade will require plants that do well in the shade. Unfortunately the plants are not grouped by their culture requirements. Although the author is a westerner only a small part of the book pertains to the Western garden, we in the west will have to be careful in choosing the plants described in the lovely photos.

The author has included a number of resources too. There is a list of display gardens. Most of these are on the East Coast. A number of nurseries are also included. He has given websites and categorizes them as retail or wholesale only.

In summary there are a lot of good ideas in the book. This reviewer thinks that they could be a little better organized.