Essential Perennials for Every Garden: Selection, Care, and Profiles for Over 110 Easy-Care Plants (CompanionHouse Books) Gardening Advice for Design, Extending the Flower Growing Season, and More

Welcome to the colorful world of perennials! 110 easy-care plants in a fully illustrated A-to-Z directory of the hardiest and most colorful perennials Over 350 photos in vibrant color, showing the flowers, garden designs, step-by-step processes, and more Easy-to-follow steps for developing a new garden or expanding an existing one with inexpensive, simple methods Time-saving tips on maintaining perennials, feeding plants, and warding off pests Plant combination suggestions for plants that complement each other when paired together Perennial characteristics, descriptions, growing conditions, and propagation methods How to use color, height, shape, texture, peak flowering times, and other factors in garden design Bursting with vivid color like the midsummer garden of your dreams, Essential Perennials for Every Garden inspires and informs gardeners from coast to coast! Packed with more than 350 photos in 224 informative pages, this is an indispensable book for beginning gardeners and experienced green thumbs alike. Whether you're learning about the basics of plant selection and care or exploring the finer points of garden design and how to get the best out of demanding plants, you'll revel in page after page of brilliant blossoms and foliage bursting to life! This expertly written, eye-catching guide to choosing and maintaining perennials covers a vast array of plants, from dainty ground huggers and wafting soft grasses to dramatic skyscrapers with unearthly blooms! Selected by authors and master gardeners Sally Roth and Jane Courtier, over 110 of the very best perennials are beautifully photographed and described, giving you recommendations about the most reliable performers for your home garden, exciting new varieties and hybrids, plant-partnering recommendations, and green-thumb tips. Roth and Courtier draw from years of knowledge and practice to share effective techniques, helpful advice, and a bounty of resources for gardeners at all levels of interest and experience. Get all the details you need to successfully grow acanthus, hollyhocks, alliums, columbines, clematis, dianthus, geraniums, heliopsis, veronicas, salvias, and a hundred more! Inside this essential gardening resource, you'll get a look at the basic characteristics and different categories of perennials; explore an alphabetically arranged directory of more than 110 popular perennials from lilies and daisies to woodland wildflowers, offering detailed information on everything from plant care to history and fun facts; get easy-to-follow steps for preparing a new garden or an existing bed to create optimal planting conditions, plus tried-and-true advice on ridding your garden of weeds, diseases, and common pests; learn how to extend the typical summer growing season into spring and fall; find practical advice on choosing the plants that will fare best in your region and soil type as well as on your individual property; learn how to use color, height, shape, texture, peak flowering times, and other factors in garden design; explore a guide to trends in planting, including container gardening, eye-catching borders, and planting to attract wildlife to your backyard; and learn about "Perfect Partners": plants that complement each other when planted together. Whether you're beginning a new perennial garden or are already a home gardener who wants to perfect or expand an existing garden, Essential Perennials for Every Garden will assist you in creating a dream garden that will add color and joy to your life for years to come!