Landscape Plants for Western Regions: An Illustrated Guide to Plants for Water Conservation

If you're serious about understanding growing and doing the best in your backyard, you should have this book as a reference. You will refer to it over and over. Simply excellent.

We're redoing our large backyard water-wise, and this is by far the best book I've found to help us along. The pictures are clear and well-described, the checklists come in very handy, but the "specialty plant groupings" really did it for me. I'm using this in conjunction with my Sunset Western Garden Book, which has good information but misses several of the elements I found in Perry's book.

Essential for landscape architects, great reference book due to Perry's knowledge in plants.

Two years ago I had a hillside full of fire hazardous weeds and no knowledge of gardening. After a four day ordeal of clearing the brush I decided to plant the hillside and knew next to nothing about what would grow there, how to plant the shrubs, how much to water and what pests might attack. I only knew I wanted to use California natives but I didn't know any names and the only latin I remembered was from my Catholic boyhood. After a one hour session with a garden consultant and visits to the Theodore Payne foundation I discovered Bob Perry's books and a whole world opened up to me. Mr. Perry is a legend in gardening circles and this beautiful book is the fount of much wisdom. Everything I have learned about gardening in these two years I learned from Bob Perry and my plants. I have scoured the immense gardening book collection at Central libary (the largest west of the Mississippi) and find this book to be the cream of the crop. Not only are the color pictures terribly important in making choices, the advice is impeccable and the variety offered is exhaustive.Thanks to Mr. Perry and his superb books I now have a garden of some seventy natives, all doing well and giving me great joy. Some day I would like to meet the man and shake his hand but for now I can only recommend his books highly.

I'm a nursery professional, and I use this book extensively in planning areas and helping clients. I consider it a "must-have" for our area. The book is organized in very useful sections: plant groupings, water conservation, design checklists, & a good plant encyclopedia for the So. California region. Color photos make it more attractive than the more popular 'Sunset' book, & I prefer it because of its focus on appropriate plant use.