The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer

Every gardener loves perennials. Buy them and plant them, and most will flourish and even expand year after year. But in addition to reliability, perennials offer gardeners a wonderful opportunity to make a stunning visual statement in their home landscapes—if you know how to combine and arrange them. In "The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer," Stephanie Cohen and Nancy Ondra, two top garden writers and teachers, offer fun, organized, and—most important—attainable advice on how to create gorgeous gardens using these beloved plants. Cohen and Ondra walk the gardener step-by-step through the process of creating new gardens, as well as of bringing new life to gardens that have lost their luster. They explain how to pick perennials that suit the site by making the most of plant color, shape, size, and texture and how to create eye-catching plant combinations. Beautiful illustrations accompany the new garden plans, and stunning photographs capture how Cohen and Ondra have redesigned their own gardens. Throughout the book a lively dialogue between Cohen and Ondra encourages readers to experiment and to create their own satisfying designs. The authors also offer down-to-earth design solutions for 20 specific types of gardens, including everything from a minimum maintenance garden to a more complex container garden, from planting a formal border to indulging in the controlled chaos of a cottage garden. Whether you are breaking ground for a new garden, or revitalizing an existing bed, "The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer" can help every gardener achieve great results—year after year.

Stephanie Cohen has received awards from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Perennial Plant Association, and in 2000 she was named Garden Commentator of the Year by the American Nursery and Landscape Association. She lives in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

Put Perennials in Their Place! Stephanie Cohen and Nancy Ondra are both thoroughly obsessed with everything about gardens and gardening -- with digging, planting ,designing, and creating great canvases of living color and texture. In this book they generously share both their passion and their knowledge about garden design. Their encouraging words, based on practical experience and the belief that there is more than one right way to create a garden, boost confidence and promote experimentation. After all, Stephanie builds her garden combinations around harmonious colors and contrasting flower forms, whereas Nan's love for colorful foliage leads her to feature dramatically contrasting leaf colors and textures. Along with design basics, they present 20 garden plans, as well as the before-and-after stories of gardens they've created for themselves and their families.

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