Annuals and Biennials
Annuals and biennials are the flowers that complete the mixed border. Perennials are the mainstay of the flower garden but don't forget that biennials and annuals add some flare, even exotic touches to the garden. Here are books to help you select the annuals that will compliment your perennials, shrubs and trees. If you can't find the book you want click through on Amazon.com or search through Powell Books in Portland at the end of this list.
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Amazing Annuals
From Library Journal "Amazing Annuals is a practical reference source that begins with an essay on the origins and uses of annuals. Hogue provides lists of annuals for various situations, then discusses color, fragrance, and container gardening. The core of the book is an alphabetical list of annuals, with descriptions, color photos, and growing conditions. Hogue gives good instructions for starting annuals from seed, pointing out that it is the only way to escape the limited variety offered as plants by garden centers. An extensive chart at the end of the book lists even more annuals than are included in the photo section, with description, height, colors, moisture, soil, light requirements, germination, and comments. Selected sources of annuals in North America, England, and on the Internet are included. Three Seasons of Summer is written in a narrative style that is at times poetic and includes anecdotes and personal experiences. Heuff's breathtaking photographs show annuals growing in borders, potagers, meadows, and containers, often in two-page spreads. They illustrate combinations of colors, textures, and heights, taking the reader from early spring through late fall."
Annuals and Biennials
You will find approximately 1,000 annuals, biennials, and short-lived perennials in Annuals and Biennials.
Book Description: Plants are grouped by families. The decidedly British tone and references to the Royal Horticultural Society in no way alter the universal scope or content of the title, which features small type and large, clear photographic layouts. That this books is geared for the more sophisticated gardener is evidenced by the practice of listing all plants by by their Latin scientific names (genus and habitat) with occasional use of common names. Country of origin, natural habitat, physical characteristics, and leaf and petal measurements (in metrics) are given for every entry. Photographs have scientific labels. (excerpt from American Book lists)
Annuals and Biennials
Book Description: Whether planting Calliopsis, Purple Wave Petunias, or Spider Flowers, everything a gardener needs to know about annuals and biennials is packed in this one compact guide.
Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens
Book Description Experienced gardeners often ask: Why plant annuals? They are common and garish and just don’t last.
This anticipated new work by eminent horticulturist Wayne Winterrowd—covering more than 250 genera and 600 species and containing over 250 color photographs—provides a great many answers to that question. Familiar garden plants such as marigolds, sunflowers, and zinnias are lovingly portrayed, as well as new species that the gardener may have only just discovered or never previously encountered. Each species is fully described by appearance, range of color, propagation, culture, climatic preferences, and garden value. In addition, Winterrowd supplies fascinating accounts of the botanical etymology, the origins of common names, and the rich historical lore that surround all plants, familiar and rare alike. Most important, his lifetime of hands-on, practical garden experience crisscrosses these pages, offering a trove of practical advice. The result is a volume that will encourage committed annuals growers in their passion and introduce a whole new world of possibilities to gardeners who have hardly guessed at the riches of these formerly undervalued plants.
A tremendously ambitious work that reflects almost ten years of careful research, observation, and experimentation, Annuals and Tender Plants for North American Gardens is a comprehensive, utterly engaging reference. Arranged alphabetically and with convenient, at-a-glance profiles prefacing each entry, this beautifully designed guide is both a good read and a visual delight.
Annuals for Every Purpose
Book Description Annuals are very much back in style after the decades-long perennial revolution. You see annuals in every garden, with the old-fashioned flowers still among the most popular. With new varieties being launched every year and older ones (many dating back more than four or five years) disappearing just as quickly, gardeners need help sorting them out. Author Larry Hodgson tells you what to look for among the numerous new introductions: greater adaptability to growing conditions, longer period of bloom, improved insect and disease resistance, and more--everything, in fact, that you need to know to make growing annuals both simple and fun. You'll discover:
How to cut back tired annuals, like sweet alyssum, to get them to rebloom even more intensely than before.
How to save money by taking cuttings of so-called "designer" annuals, using one plant to create many.
All about overwintering numerous "annuals" that are really tropical perennials.
Which cool-loving annuals you can sow in the fall so they can sprout when the conditions are perfect the following spring.
Simple tricks that make designing with annuals a snap.
You'll find annual gardening has never been easier--or more exciting--than when you have Annuals for Every Purpose as a handy reference.
Armitage's Garden Annuals: A Color Encyclopedia
Book Description Bold and dramatic, annuals have been experiencing a resurgence, and garden centers and catalogs offer them in bewildering variety, from traditional bedding plants to new, specialty introductions. In Armitage's Garden Annuals, author Allan M. Armitage selects proven specimens from nearly 200 genera of plants and evaluates their gardenworthiness and sheer beauty. With humor, authority, and a wealth of practical experience, Armitage offers invaluable insights into those plants that truly earn their keep --- and a few that do not! He has illustrated them with more than 1300 stunning color photos, making this the definitive photographic reference to annuals, biennials, and tender perennials.
Horticulturists, students, and dedicated home gardeners will be familiar with Armitage's authority on this topic from his more technical Manual of Annuals, Biennials, and Half-Hardy Perennials. That volume was singled out as a winner of the Choice Academic Book Award, American Horticultural Society Book Award, and the Garden Writers of America Golden Globe Award. While this new offering is a perfect pictorial companion to the Manual, it also stands alone with its personal commentary and inspiring advice on the most interesting, important, or overlooked plants.
Attractive and easy to use, Armitage's Garden Annuals follows the example of the author's celebrated Garden Perennials and dispenses with the formalities, delving right into the details gardeners most desire. The book is like a private tutorial with a master teacher. Sharpen your pencils and take notes when Dr. Armitage advises, "I expect tweedia to become a bestseller," asks "How many daisies do you know that climb up trellises?" or even concludes "The flowers are boring at best..."
The encyclopedia is rounded out by more than two dozen helpful lists of plants suitable for particular situations or uses, including plants for cool-summer areas, plants for dry situations, edible plants, container plants, shade plants, vines, and flowers for cutting.
Armitage's Manual of Annuals, Biennials, and Half-Hardy Perennials
Book Description: Annuals are experiencing a resurgence, as today’s gardeners demand a wider variety of options in plant selection. No longer confined to monotone bedding plants, dozens of "unusual" annuals are now available at garden centers in colors and forms far removed from the classic annual bed of pink petunias or red geraniums.
Cottage Garden Annuals
Book Description This is an essentially British book, filled with charming photos of bungalows surrounded by a riot of annual flowers. These old-fashioned annuals are the rangy, colorful, sweetly scented flowers that evoke nostalgia for a grandma's garden that most of us never knew, but that we can grow ourselves with the help of this book. Everything old is new again: many of the flowers here, like castor oil bean, celosia, and abutilon, have been used for decades in traditional British gardens, and they're the hot new annuals of today. Clive Lane gives detailed instructions, complete with drawings, on growing annuals from seed, explaining techniques like pricking out and stratification. What is most unusual and useful about this book are the lengthy lists of annuals for specific situations or with special characteristics; for instance, annual vines to grow for flowers, annuals for fragrance and cutting, and annuals that give at least three months of bloom. Why choose this book from among the many others on annuals? It makes gardening look like sheer, creative delight, with window boxes packed with colorful annuals, front gardens with such a fluff of annuals that it is hard to find the stepping stones, and theme gardens such as "The Edwardian Hot Bed Border." --Valerie Easton
Discovering Annuals
Book Description: Graham Rice presents his expert's choice of the best traditional varieties of annuals, along with the finest of modern introductions and some less familiar plants which deserve to be grown more widely. He explains what makes annuals work well together, in sun or shade, in borders, bedding schemes, and containers; and he gives comprehensive instruction on raising annuals, planting, and care. Discovering Annuals contains all the inspirational planting ideas and practical information you need to transform your garden with these alluring plants.
New Guinea Impatiens
Book Description: A Ball Guide-edited by Warren Banner and Michael Klopmeyer-Increase your success with one of the fastest-growing segments of today's bedding plant market. This Ball guide is the only complete information source available for New Guinea impatiens. Topics include plant culture (media, watering, nutrition, light, temperature, stock plant production, rooting and finishing, plugs), pest and disease management, post production care, and garden care.
Poppies: A Guide to the Poppy Family in the Wild and in Cultivation
Book Description: Poppies, first published in 1993, was the first book devoted exclusively to these popular plants. Not only are the true poppies, genus Papaver, covered, but all the other members of the poppy family as well. The book includes the horned poppies Glaucium, the tree poppies Dendromecon, the California poppies Eschscholzia, the desert poppies Arctomecon, the prickly poppies Argemone, the pygmy poppies Canbya, the plumed poppies Macleaya, the blue poppies Meconopsis, the long-fruited poppies Roemeria, and many more.
Grey-Wilson concentrates primarily on species and forms in cultivation, together with those species of striking or particular interest that are not present in cultivation but fully deserve to be introduced. For this new edition, the author included much new information about recent discoveries in the wild, as well as new cultivars introduced since Poppies was first published. There are general chapters on the family, cultivation, and classification, and a key to the genera. The individual genera, grouped into their respective subfamilies, are dealt with in detail, as are their more specialized cultivation requirements. Important synonyms have been included to avoid confusion or ambiguity. Botanical authorities are given for all recognized species and synonyms. This work will be very welcome to committed gardeners and horticulturists as a much-needed—and profusely illustrated—source of practical and botanical information.
RHS Practicals: Annuals and Biennials
The Sweet Pea Book
I received my copy and proceeded to devour the words in it. Graham Rice poetically walks you through the world of growing the "queen of the annuals" - Sweet peas. If you grow these fragrant beauties this book will increase your love for them, perhaps to the point of addiction.
Book Description: An inspiring and comprehensive guide for anyone interested in growing these most exquisite of fragrant flowers and using them in the garden. It covers the colorful history of the sweet pea, provides detailed practical advice on seed raising and cultivation, offers ideas for using the plants effectively in the garden, and discusses dwarf sweet peas for small gardens and patios. A comprehensive descriptive list of species and varieties will prove useful to all sweet pea enthusiasts.
Taylor's Guide to Annuals : How to Select and Grow more than 400 Annuals, Biennials, and Tender Perennials
Book Description: Several concurrent trends have created the need for a new book on annual plants. One is the increasing popularity of container gardening, for which these plants are particularly suited. Another is the hottest trend in landscaping -- creating a bold, even jungly look through the use of tropical plants and other dramatic specimens, most grown as annuals in temperate zones. To meet the demand, growers have developed hundreds of new plants and improved cultivars of old favorites. In this Taylor's Guide, buyers will find more than five hundred of the latest, trendiest plants and the best cultivars of the beloved old standbys.
Three Seasons of Summer: Gardening With Annuals and Biennials
Book Description: This lovely, oversized photo book follows a seasonal flower garden from earliest spring through first frost. Because annuals flower over a long season, it is worthwhile to concentrate on color effects that will last for months, and Ethne Clarke provides both written instruction and visual inspiration to do so. Familiar annuals such as sunflowers and nasturtiums are given as much attention as the more exotic Cosmos atrosanguinea (chocolate cosmos) or red orache, with special notice given to scent and foliage effects. Ribbons of annuals twining throughout borders, hedged gardens stuffed full of poppies or pansies, pots overflowing with nicotiana, cutting gardens, and flowery meadows--all the ideas and details are here, illustrated in full-page color photography. --Valerie Easton
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