Product Description

This visionary planting guide features an A-Z of more than 1,000 great garden plants. Each plant is photographed in glorious partnership with one, two or three ideal companions, creating more than 4,000 of the most imaginative and visually effective combinations possible. With a practical introduction, analyses of what makes a successful combination, the author goes on to show how to recreate combinations shown and invent new combinations. With chapters on bulbs, climbers, perennials, shrubs, trees, roses, and annuals, this book has become the essential reference book for all those who wish to combine plants according to colour, shape, texture, and form in every corner of their gardens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18690 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

About the Author
Tony Lord is a gardening author, photographer and consultant with an expert eye for effective planting combinations. Formerly a Gardens Adviser to the National Trust, he edits The Royal Horticultural Society's annual Plant Finder, and lectures on plants, gardens and garden history. His books include Best Borders, winner of the Garden Writers' Guild 'Book of the Year' award for 1994, Gardening at Sissinghurst, and Designing with Roses. Andrew Lawson, photographer, was a major contributor to Highgrove, Portrait of an Estate by HRH The Prince of Wales, and as author and photographer has published Performance Plants, and The Gardener's Book of Colour. In 1999 he was named 'Garden Photographer of the Year' by the Garden Writers' Guild. Andrew Lawson lives in Oxfordshire.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
I just love this book! I've already spent a few happy hours armchair gardening. You can choose a favourite plant and find suggestions for others that harmonise or provide contrast but importantly flower at the same time and prefer similar conditions of light, shade, soil moisture and pH etc. You can then look up the entries for these plants for another set of suggested neighbours and so on... You can play a form of "Mornington Crescent" by seeing how many times you repeat this process before you come across "Verbena bonariensis". Maybe I should get out more and put my plans into action!

Not exactly visionary and not really an encyclopedia
I am disappointed with this book. I have found the other rhs guides very useful and have learnt a lot from them, but this seems to me to be more of a coffee table book. I find the planting suggestions uninspiring and unoriginal - honeysuckle with ivy for example. The photos seem underexposed, and have poor detail, as if the colours have bled. It is also difficult to use if you want to search for a particular plant. It is not organised in a simple A -Z fashion like an encyclopedia. It is split into strangely grouped sections. There are often many page references for one plant, because of the way the book is organised, and some that I would think quite ordinary aren't listed. I was surprised to find no section on ferns and grasses, yet there are large sections on roses and hostas, outside of the section on perennials. It is illogically organised. I find the section at the front about design unnecessary. The same goes for the advice about what colour and shape goes with what in the descriptions of the plants. I was hoping for an encyclopedia simply listing plant combinations, not a design book. It's ok if you have a lot of money, and are just beginning, and have no sense of colour or design.

A great guide to harmonious planting
This is one of the most well-thumbed books in my garden book collection. It's a comprehensive guide to plants, but with a twist. Select a plant you're interested in and you'll find a number of suggestions of plants which combine with it well. A lot of gardening magazines suggest the same combinations time after time. Use this guide instead and you'll not only have a garden that's different from the rest, you'll have a garden that hangs together.

One word of warning - it won't prevent those impulse buys at the garden centre, but it will tell you which plants to buy to go with them at your next visit!