Review of The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

I am exceptionally pleased that 'The Well-Tended Perennial Garden' has gotten as many favorable reviews as it has, since I suspect it's charms and offerings are just a bit more subtle than your average glossy oversized gardening book. It is essential that you pay attention to the subtitle, as this is a book specializing in teaching us about setting up and planting perennials, and less about choosing or matching or even weeding perennials (the author does not like to weed!). If you flip through the book, you may be put off by the lack of illustrations accompanying the text. While I'm not a big fan of pictures in cookbooks, unless it's discussing a specific technique, I sort of miss them in gardening books. This volume is economically done, with all the glossies in a central rotogravure section. This is ok, because the real meat is in the lessons on planting and pruning. The only place I really miss them is in the encyclopedia of perennials, which is less a true comprehensive encyclopedia than a dictionary of pruning techniques by species. The final two appendices on plant maintanence schedules and lists of plants by care technique may be worth the price of the book for serious gardiners. This is easily the most useful book I've read on perennials.

Product Description
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, showing perennials in various border situations and providing images for each of the entries in the A-Z encyclopedia. In addition, there is a new 32-page journal section with room to 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.



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Review of Deerproofing Your Yard & Garden (Paperback)

Being new property & house owners in a suburban area adjacent to a deer wintering yard, this book provided us excellent advice on coping with our local deer population. We are planning a garden from scratch, and theinformation is very practical. It should help any gardener with deer intheir area reduce their cost of resultant damage. The book deals with deerbehavioural characteristics, and the likelihood of deer frequenting theproperty, as well as how to plan a deerproof garden. From plants that aredetested by deer, to plants that will guarantee deer company: annual,perennial, shrub & tree choices are listed, including hardiness zoneinformation. A range of strategies for keeping deer out of the garden isalso included. The strategies go from fences to foul smelling substances tonoise makers, and advice is given on the likelihood of success for each. Anexcellent tailorable reference book.



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