PLANTS FOR ALL SEASONS - Softcover

Creating a garden landscape that has colour, beauty and architectural interest year-round is far easier than many gardeners believe. The secret is to choose richly versatile plants and to appreciate that brilliant autumn and winter foliage, stems and berries can create just as stunning an effect as spring and summer flowers. Selecting over 85 plants--shrubs, climbers, trees, and perennials and other border plants--each photographed in at least two seasons of interest, Ursula Buchan shows how with imagination and a little planning your garden can look good throughout the year, including the winter months. Plants for All Seasons opens with an introductory section that explains the principles of planting for more than one season of interest. It also examines how best to assess the planting schemes you already have and how to adapt them to a four-season plan. The different effects that can be achieved in two or more seasons using the same plants are then covered in sections dealing with foliage, flowers, berries, bark and habit. The main part of the book is devoted to inspirational and highly informative plant features. The selected plants are each shown in the two or three seasons when they are at their most striking, while Ursula Buchan's elegantly written text reveals the special characteristics of each at different times of the year-- with detailed information on its height and spread, habit, country of origin, flowering season, hardiness and cultivation.