Product Description

"Perennial Combinations" features plant medleys that bring colour, texture, and excitement to the garden in every season. The book features 130 of the best perennial combinations with photographs of each grouping, along with a numbered photo key and plant list. Each grouping features just two to six plants; gardeners can plant the combinations as they appear for small garden spaces or they can repeat or mix the combinations for large beds and landscapes.Available for the first time in paperback, with a new chapter of plant combinations featuring today's big, dramatic perennials, backyard gardeners will find the best choices to accent wide open spaces, marry slopes and high foundations, and make an impact on the landscape with impressive and showy plants. From tall plumes to bold foliage, many of these plant combinations create a living privacy screen and offer a bounty of bloom for those looking to make an "architectural" statement in their perennial beds. Plant cultivar names have been updated throughout the book so gardeners can choose perennials that are readily available at local nurseries.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #478764 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From the Author
All gardeners need a little inspiration now and then.
Welcome to the world of perennials, and an easy and effective way to create beautiful gardens. I hope you will find PERENNIAL COMBINATIONS helpful and inspirational. I want to share with you a bit of my philosopy of garden design, and tell you how combinations can help you. For me, a garden has two goals. The first is to please me aesthetically and emotionally. I see the garden as a place of recreation-a place to be born anew each time I walk out my door. The garden is a place, an environment, not an object. Many people point to their garden, as something isolated and disconnected from the fabric of the landscape. I enter my garden before I leave my house by viewing it through the window. The moment I step from the door, I am surrounded by plants, the sound of birds, and the flutter of butterflies and other beneficial insects. My garden is alive. This is the second goal I mentioned earlier. I want my garden to be a safe haven for wildlife rather than a place devoid of nature.

How do perennial combinations figure in all of this? Its simple. Combinations are the building blocks of the garden, and they are arranged around garden spaces. It is important to have spaces for outdoor activities, such as patios and small lawns. What makes the garden nurturing is to wrap these areas in a blanket of trees, shrubs and perennials.

Combinations of plants that share the same growth requirements will be the most successful, and the lowest maintenance. Varied colors, forms and textures, put together a few plants at a time, help you to build a garden that is beautiful and successful. My book gives you hundreds of tips and techniques for creating these combinations. It also shows you how to link combinations together to make entire beds and borders that are enviromentally and aesthetically harmoniuos. As you gain confidence, you can personalize your garden. The greatest pleasure comes from creating a place that is true to who you are as the gardener. Your garden should be uniquely yours. Take the ideas in this book, copy them, and then put your own personal spin on them.

I hope you find a weath of inspiration as well as concrete ideas to help you create your own paradise, in both your back yard, and your front yard!

Good luck, and enjoy making a garden that is personal environmentally friendly and beautiful.

Customer Reviews

A must for the perennail gardener!
This book far surpasses other perennial books that I've read. It covers all the bases. It tells you what plants to put in the different parts of your yard (for example, dry, wet, shady, clay soils). It show you had to acheive lovely color and height combinations. It helps you plan for the different seasons of the garden. And, it even tells you how to care for your plants so that you get the most vigorous and sustained performance.

perennial combinations - Stunning looks that make your garde
Informative, yes and some of the combinations are "new", but far from all inspiring. Though some of them might even help you no to make the same mistake yourself ...
The pictures are poor, quite a few of them with a blue tinge that doesn't exactly help you to get a true idea of the reality and others lack focus and/or depth.
The "22 exclusive garden designs" does not state height and spread in meters.

"Talk about a great combination!"
"Talk about a great combination! Cole Burrell's brilliant design talent blends with his extensive experience as a gardener and a plantsman to make this book both visually dynamic and enormously informative. Not only are there numerous ideas for inspiring design combinations, but practical tips on soil, light, and maintenance requirements for the plants abound. This book should help every gardener-from the beginner to the professional-design gardens that look as good in the landscape as they do on paper." -Tracy DiSabato-Aust, author of The Well-Tended Perennial Garden