Product Description

Fire your imagination with this fantastic guide to creative plant combinations. Anna Pavord's perfect planting suggestions help solve the perennial problem of what to plant with what for best effect. Includes beautiful photographs and tips on which perennials and annuals no garden should be without.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1546249 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Amazon.com
Anna Pavord has no patience for dwarf plants ("a perverse trend"), pastels ("Stop overdosing on pastels. We've had more than enough of them"), or winter gardens ("Who needs them? The pleasures of the winter garden are only for masochists"), not to mention all-white beds ("somnambulist gardening"). She has a sharp eye and a predilection for cheeky Briticisms, and she's not afraid to use either. Plant Partners is organized into seasons--the real growing seasons: signs of spring, spring turns to summer, high summer, and into autumn. Within these seasons Pavord presents 60 "star" plants that should be highlighted in the perennial bed. For each of her favorite plants she provides a supporting cast of two varieties--annuals, bulbs, or perennials--that partner particularly well with the stars, and under the same soil and light conditions. The groupings might be designed so that all of the flowers will be in bloom at once (pasqueflower with grape hyacinth and deep-purple primroses, for example), or so that when one flower's blooms are just starting to fade another's are waiting in the wings (lily-of-the-valley with a hellebore and barrenwort). A listing of "alternative" partners extends the range of choices to include more unusual plants and ones that might be more challenging to grow. Foliage is given as much consideration as blooms:

"Darling! Salmon! How brave!" exclaim the white-garden brigade as they sharpen their pruning knives for a horticultural mercy killing. You might as well fall on your garden fork there and then as try to explain that the point of the rodgersia they are looking at is not the buff-pink flower but the whirls of bronze underneath it.

But her exhortation to use foliage--as well as grasses and nonflowering perennials as "star" plants--to best advantage cannot be ignored in Plant Partners. Pavord's advice throughout is practical and opinionated. --Liana Fredley

From Library Journal
Combining plants in the garden to achieve a pleasing effect of color and symmetry is an art form many gardeners try to emulate. For her take on the practice, Pavord (The Tulip) presents 60 outstanding perennials (as well as some bulbs and annuals) and two plants that will complement them in the garden. The perennials are arranged by the three growing seasons, and each is illustrated with a gorgeous close-up photograph. Pavord also provides general growing advice in addition to plants' growing dimensions, qualities, and varieties. A chapter at the end of the book lists alternatives for different site and soil conditions. Oddly, a shot of the plants with their "partners" is missing, though a few combination photos are provided in the introductory essay to each section. Though not as successful as Jeff Cox's excellent Plant Marriages (LJ 3/1/93), this will be a good addition to gardening collections in public libraries. Phillip Oliver, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Anna Pavord is a well known author and a contributing gardening writer to Country Life, Country Living, Elle Decoration, The Independent and The Observer. She is also an associate editor and regular writer for Gardens Illustrated and a sought-after speaker on the gardening lecture circuit in the UK and US. Her previous DK gardening titles include The Border Book, New Kitchen Garden and the highly acclaimed bestseller The Tulip. Anna lives in West Dorset.