Product Review

Everything you need to know to start and be successful at perennial gardening. This book (all 99 pages) is a distillation of 30 years teaching beginner gardeners and answering their questions about how to best start perennial flower gardening.

Written from an environmental, chemical-free point of view.

A simple system for beginners illustrating how to design a perennial flower garden to bloom all summer. This isn’t rocket science and any beginner gardener can accomplish this. Green also provides extensive lists of plants that bloom at different times so gardeners can print out the lists for shopping.

From the boring (but critical) easy way to make great garden soil without a lot of digging or work to factual and practical ways to feed your perennials without all the hype and myth currently being promoted.

From killing grass in the garden without herbicides to planting for the most up-to-date information on topics such as using wood mulch in the garden (and how to do it successfully without robbing the plants of food)

If you’re tired of losing plants to winter, the main methods for keeping plants alive - right from this semi-retired nurseryman who delights in finding ways to grow plants from far outside his gardening hardiness zone.

Getting free or low-cost plants need not be an arcane science, this book also describes the specific (and easy) ways to get more perennial flowers from cuttings, seed and division along with simple when-to-do-it recommendations.

Gardeners sometimes can’t decide what constitutes a shade garden or a part shade garden; Green gives a simple system based on the clock to make this clear.

5 essential beginner plants for sun and 5 for shade are described in the book so beginners can have hardy, long-lived perennial flowers immediately without having to sort through the hundreds available in garden centers. Entire gardens can be constructed with just these 10 plants (and the author has done exactly that)

"You excelled yourself AGAIN, as always, Now, I have more reading material to add to my long list" C K - Ontario gardener