Product Description

With more than 130,000 copies sold since its original publication, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has proven itself to be one of the most useful tools a gardener can have. Now, in this expanded edition, there's even more to learn from and enjoy. This is the first, and still the most thorough, book to detail essential practices of perennial care such as deadheading, pinching, cutting back, thinning, disbudding, and deadleafing, all of which are thoroughly explained and illustrated. More than 200 new color photographs have been added to this revised edition, showing perennials in various border situations and providing images for each of the entries in the A-to-Z encyclopedia of important perennial species. In addition, there is a new 32-page journal section, in which you can enter details, notes, and observations about the requirements and performance of perennials in your own garden. Thousands of readers have commented that The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is one of the most useful and frequently consulted books in their gardening libraries. This new, expanded edition promises to be an even more effective ally in your quest to create a beautiful, healthy, well-maintained perennial garden.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3337 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Review
"A practical book filled with the details of how to care for perennials, from cutting back to fertilizing, staking and dividing. ... Aust thoroughly explains the how and when for all these techniques. ... Perhaps the most useful section is that of lengthy lists in the back that help you determine which perennials you do and don't want to grow, depending on your tolerance for maintenance and where you live, and which perennials are deer-resistant, have seedheads that attract song birds, are short-lived, need deadheading or lots of other categories thought up by this walking encyclopedia of a perennial expert." Valerie Easton, Seattle Times, August 5, 2006 (Seattle Times )

"A practical book filled with the details of how to care for perennials, from cutting back to fertilizing, staking and dividing. ... Aust thoroughly explains the how and when for all these techniques. ... Perhaps the most useful section is that of lengthy lists in the back that help you determine which perennials you do and don't want to grow, depending on your tolerance for maintenance and where you live, and which perennials are deer-resistant, have seedheads that attract song birds, are short-lived, need deadheading or lots of other categories thought up by this walking encyclopedia of a perennial expert."
—Valerie Easton, Seattle Times, August 5, 2006 (Seattle Times )

Review
"If you don't have a horticulture background, are too busy to take the master gardener program, and wonder about the nuts and bolts of gardening, read this book." Steve Aitken, Horticulture

"A practical book filled with the details of how to care for perennials..." Valerie Easton, Seattle Times, August 5, 2006 (Seattle Times )

"Well worth revisiting, with more than 200 new photos and a 32-page journal section in which you can enter details, notes, and observations about the requirements and perfromances of perennials in your own garden." Suzanne Hively, Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 11, 2006

"This book raise[s] gardeners' awareness through its refusal to pull punches or let the central tenets get lost in thickets of flowery prose. It's probably the most down-and-dirty book on gardening I've ever read."

From the Publisher
With more than 130,000 copies sold since the original publication, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has proven itself to be one of the most useful tools a gardener can have. In this expanded edition more than 200 color photographs have been added, along with a 32-page journal section with room to enter details, notes, and observations about your own garden.

Customer Reviews

A classic
As the creator of a now three year old garden of shrubs, bulbs and perennials, I got this book just in time for the pruning lessons, but sadly too late for the soil preparation lessons!
I recommend this book to anyone who is ready to move beyond the glossy magazine spreads and into the realm of truly effective techniques that do require hard work, but that also have long-term results.

Perennial Favorite about Perennials
I work as a perennial salesperson in a large, family-owned garden center in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago. Any time a customer asks for a book on perennials or gardening in general, I always recommend this one.

It provides a wealth of general gardening information on soil preparation, watering, diseases, pruning techniques and more. The plant encyclopedia section is the most valuable part of the book. In it, Ms. Aust discusses the most widely available and popular perennials individually and in detail. For each plant, there is a picture next to which she lists the latin name, the common name, the light, water and soil requirements, the height, width and bloom-time. After those details are presented, she discusses when to prune, cut back, dead-head, divide and fertilize that plant. She has gathered this information over a lifetime of gardening experience.

The appendix of the book contains many valuable lists of plants under headings such as "Plants to Pinch for Height Control" or "Clay Busters". I can't imagine selling perennials to others or tending to my own garden without this bible.

One complaint that customers have mentioned to me about this book (after I have recommended it)is that Ms. Aust uses the Latin nomenclature for everything. This was intimidating to me at first, too. I had to learn the Latin for my job as a perennial salesperson so I was forced to "embrace" it. I am glad that I did because it makes reading a book like this easier. My advice to anyone interested in gardening: learn the Latin! It's intellectually challenging and fun. It will open up a wide world of plants to you. Carpe diem!

My new gardening bible
As a fairly new gardener I discovered this book at the library last year and it is wonderful. It really gets into how and when to pinch and prune (and what these terms mean) plants which I now realize is such an important part of how your flowers will look when they bloom...The author mostly talks about tried and true perennials, but we see them in a whole new light, you can control the height of your plants and even the bloom time. Excellent drawings and color illustrations are very helpful. I really enjoyed the "before and after" photos of gardens that the author has designed.