Best Garden Color for Florida

This very splashy book with big type, excellent large color photos on big pages is a useful guide if you are looking to brighten up your Florida garden. Crawford provides more information about how to care for each plant than is available in most books. The format of two facing pages for each plant with the information arranged in a common format and organization makes it very easy to use. Her carefully dealing with suggesting companion plantings and showing their combined impact in a garden is extremely useful. There are some inconsistencies and editing errors for example on pages 122-123 Butterfly Bush, there is extensive comment about it being a better plant for North Florida and very short-lived or unsuccessful in South Florida yet she recommends it for zones 10a to 11. Obviously her priority in plant choice in this book is color and her criteria of can she get it to perform. From my perspective I question her advocating the use of spray liquid fertilizers on nectar plants without mentioning the negative impact on butterfly catepillars of these chemicals. I got the book as a gift--and a lovely one it was--but I have not yet become convinced to spring for the companion volume "Easy Gardens for South Florida. There are many ways in which they would make more sense together than they do seperately but I have been waiting for the new edition to come out. Some of the plants e.g Forsythia Sage which she raves about I and the major nursuries here in Sarasota and Venice have been unable to secure.

I've lived in Florida for five years and always wanted a lot of color in my garden. Most of my efforts failed, except for annuals which I constantly have to replace. This book introduced me to a whole new group of easy perennials that bloom a lot and last for years! And each plant description has more care information than any other book I've ever seen! This book has changed my garden from drab to gorgeous!

This book is geared toward our Florida gardens. I am a South Florida landscaper and use this book constantly on sales calls. It is a super reference book chock full of pertinent info & color photos. It is easy to read and covers all aspects of plant needs from lighting, watering, soil & space requirements, fertilization & even pest cautions. The variety of plants listed by Ms. Crawford are readily available in most local nurseries and do well here in Florida. This is exactly the kind of book we Florida landscapers have been waiting for!

This book is great. Easy to read and understand, many pictures, author lists good and bad plants, saves you tons of money in deciding what to purchase. I have owned this book a few months and have gone back to it dozens of times for reference.

I found this book to be very useful in helping me to improve my butterfly garden in the Ft. Myers area. The author has used gorgeous pictures that allowed me to determine whether the specific plants she recommended would be appropriate to my garden and where they should be planted.The book has categories such as blooming season, planting tips, size and dimensions of specific plants, possible pest problems and much more which I found very useful. The author's previous book, Easy Gardens for South Florida became a "bible" for me as a newcomer to Florida gardening. The combination of both of these books is allowing me to create a garden that is the "wonder" of our neighborhood and a place of great peace and satisfaction for me.I would highly recommend these books for anyone who wants to plant successfully and with beauty, anywhere in Florida.