Best Times to Plant Info
I have never seen such a gorgeous flower book! Packed full of colorful photos of flowers. It does lack a little on the informtional side (for example what zone do the flowers grow best in…) but for inspiration, you cannot find a better book anywhere!
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Category: Hydroponics & Seed Starting
February 28th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
This book was captivating at first glance, and it keeps getting better. This is not a comprehensive how-to-grow-flowers guide for beginners, but rather a planning tool for evaluating color/height/form combinations.
The bulk of the book comprises four sets of horizontal strips, spiral-bound, each showing a full-color photo on one side and a description on the facing side (description includes scientific and common name, a sketch of the plant’s growth habit, including height and spread, a paragraph or two on the flower, the flower’s season of bloom, and sun/moisture/exposure/soil type/zone requirements). There are something like 50 or 60 flowers per section. Flip them back and forth to make umptey-ump combinations of flowers.
The sections are arranged, as you might expect, by height–that is, the flowers shown in the lowest set of strips are all low-growing (pansies, alyssum, and so on) and the ones shown in the top set of strips are the tallest (sunflowers, etc.) But aha! it took me a while to notice that they’re also arranged by growing season–that is, the flowers in the earlier pages are spring bloomers, while the ones toward the back of the book bloom late in the season. Clever!
My grade-school daughter and I have spent hours flipping back and forth, looking for that just-right combination of colors, shapes, and heights for our flower patch. (Some of the strips suggest suitable companions; the strips are numbered for reference.) It’s really helped her (and me) focus on combinations and how flowers will actually look in context–making it much simpler to visit the garden center and come away with something that will *work*, as opposed to a little of this, that, the other, and whatever was eye-catching or on sale on that particular day!
The rest of the book has a bit of basic information and a dozen or so sample plantings, again with lovely color photos and a minimum of detail (but probably enough to get on with, if you’ve ever put trowel to earth before).
[Quibbles: Not much distinction is made between annuals, biennials, and perennials (that is, you might not notice that that flower marked for late-spring bloom must be sowed the year before... the info is there, it's just not very prominent). Not all of the photos are to scale; some of the low-growing blooms are shown quite large in comparison to the taller ones. I didn't notice any listing of sources for seeds or plants; a reference list of seed catalogs would have been nice. But these are trivial flaws for the most part.]
All in all, worth the money just for the fun of it. But if you use it to make a plan and stick to it, you’ll probably save the price of the book in ill-considered plant purchases as well. We’ll write again when our garden is as pretty as we’ve imagined it…
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:19 am
I have never seen such a gorgeous flower book! Packed full of colorful photos of flowers. It does lack a little on the informtional side (for example what zone do the flowers grow best in…) but for inspiration, you cannot find a better book anywhere!
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Honestly, I ordered this because I wanted free shipping and needed a few cheap items to get to $25–so here was a solution! While priced right, I was a bit disappointed with the stickers. They are small–perfect for little envelopes–but the pictures are not very clear. The flowers seem cute enough, but wish it was a tad bit more detailed.