Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #871996 in Books
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Amazon.com
Many people love the idea of a house full of fresh-cut flowers, but sadly, most have no idea how to select, care for, and arrange flowers, much less grow them. Flowers A to Z is a superb guide for anyone who enjoys flowers and wants to celebrate them in the home or garden. Author Cecelia Heffernan, a floral designer by trade, provides a wealth of information on how to cut, purchase, arrange, care for, and grow all types of flowers.

The book is divided into sections covering everything leading up to a beautiful flower arrangement sitting on your dining room table. It begins with a chapter on hardware, which details all the basic tools--from floral shears to floral wire and tape--that you'll need for cutting and arranging flowers, as well as advice on choosing and caring for vases and other containers. The "Handling Flowers" chapter explains the proper way to cut, condition, and care for flowers to ensure the most attractive and long-lasting arrangements. The author sprinkles valuable tidbits of advice throughout the book. She suggests, for instance, that it is better to use branches or thick foliage as arranging aids instead of floral foam, chicken wire, or other artificial aids, as those can shorten the vase life of flowers significantly. This section concludes with a concise and informative guide to growing flowers in your home garden.

The final section, which makes up the bulk of the book, is an alphabetically arranged guide to flowers from agapanthus to zinnia. Each flower is depicted in a gorgeous full-page photograph, while smaller images show the flowers in different stages of development, illustrating the difference between fresh and older flowers. The informative text is written in a handy reference style, detailing the specifics of each flower: its scientific name, available colors, scent, how long the blooms will last after being cut, relative cost, and other useful information.

The gorgeous photographs, accessible text, and handy cross-referencing will surely inspire many readers to fill their homes and gardens with blossoms. --Robin Donovan

From Booklist
Fresh flowers, whether from the florist or garden, do so much to enhance a home, and yet properly caring for them is almost as difficult as growing them in the first place. How fortunate, then, to have expert floral and garden designer Heffernan present professional advice about how to prepare cut flowers so that they'll last. Recommendations for the best tools and containers are followed by in-depth profiles of 55 of the most popular garden and hothouse flowers, in which Heffernan shares such trade secrets as the flower's vase life and its cost at different seasons. All instructional books should be this clear and concise. Straightforward directions are supported by close-up photographs, leaving no room for doubt as to what to do. But to describe this book as merely instructional is an oversimplification, for T. K. Hill's sumptuous photography, combined with its coffee-table format, makes it as much an art book as it is a how-to. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Cecelia Heffernan owns a floral design business, Flowers by Cecelia, and a flower, garden, and home shop, Flower Hardware, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she lives.

T.K. Hill is a photographer who lives in Jackson, Wyoming.