Taylor's 50 Best Perennials for Shade: Easy Plants for More Beautiful Gardens

I have become an avid gardener and love to have flowers all season long. This book has helped me plan a lovely garden for my home. It is colorful and easy to read and understand. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys plants and flowers.

Since much of my yard is shaded, and we still love flowers, this book is just what the Dr. ordered. Have planted several plants described in this book and they are healthy and doing well.

I bought this book to help a friend who built her dream house on a wooded lot find plants and flowers that would bloom and grow. We were thrilled to find that all the plants listed would grow in our climate area (Pennsylvania). The book provides a good selection of plants without overwhelming a novice with too many choices and hard-to-find or tricky plants. We were very pleased to be able to find plants that would fit some of her problem areas (under trees, wet spots, etc.) and fit her requirements of providing her with real bloom without having to plant annuals every year.

Subtitled 'Easy Plants for More Beautiful Gardens', this book is a pithy reference for gardeners in urban and suburban areas who are trying to fill shady spots with attractive blooms and foliage. I've had the book for a year and got good results this year using plants I chose, based on this author's advice, last year. The book starts with a short chapter on the basics: soil, hardiness zones, mulching, planting, watering and pests -- one paragraph each. Each of fifty plants then gets one-and-a-half pages (and the print is big) -- a photo, a paragraph of introduction to the plant followed by how and where to grow instructions, a mention of varieties, and a chart that gives zone hardiness, bloom time, light, height and interest. Also of value are sidebars on a wide variety of topics, e.g. planting under trees, winter protection, wildflowers from seeds, propagating by division, woodland planting, coordinating strong color, controlling slugs. These sidebars are made more valuable by their inclusion in the index. There is also a glossary and a hardiness zone map.This is an enjoyable and informative book, but if you are a neophyte you might also want to get a companion book that covers basics more thoroughly, and if you are a truly devoted gardener you might want to get a book that devotes more time to each species and/or discusses more plants.

Perfect! It was exactly what I needed. It gives a nice picture with a quick description of all the essential information on the side and then more, if desired. None of this, "a wonder in your garden... incredibly fragrant and blah, blah, blah.... " Here's the common name, scientific name, partial shade, height, color, etc. I have a big garden and I know what type of light I get and what type of soil I have and what type of flower beds I want. I just need to know what will do well with my situation and skimming through books that do not tell you the gist up front I find incredibly annoying. The best thing about this book is that it gives you a quick description of the flower and then, if you want more information, it gives you the type of family it belongs to, a more in-depth description AND other flowers that would work well and look good with it! What more could you ask for? Maybe more than 50? I wish there were more of these Taylor books.