Great Gits: Perennial All Stars

When I was growing up, I always enjoyed seeing my Grandma's flower bed. She always had beautiful flowers that showed the efforts of her hard work. She kept up her large flower bed by continually working in manure for fertilizer and also by keeping the weeds plucked out. My grandma is now in a care center, but she maintained her perennial flower garden into her 90's.

My mom also has taken up the interest in perennials and took a class through a local community college on how to make a flower garden the most visually appealing. For the last class, they were supposed to receive a list of information about various perennials, but she missed that class.

Since she had really been looking forward to getting that list, I got her a book for Christmas called Perennial All Stars: The 150 Best Perennials for Great-Looking, Trouble-Free Gardens, by Jeff Cox - who is the host of HGTV "Grow It!" I wasn't really sure what the book would be like since I wasn't able to look at it closely before I bought it. (Although you can take a small peek at it here.) When it arrived though, I was really impressed by it.

The book has great illustrations and lots of information about each plant. Each perennial has 2 pages dedicated to it that include photos and detailed information about the plant. It also has a highlighted section within the information that serves as a quick reference for the plant's growing conditions, similar to what you might find on a growing tag from the store.

I think one of the neatest things about this book is the Perennial Plant Finder - located right after the table of contents. It has the plants grouped into great categories that are wonderful for planning a flower garden. These categories include:
Spring-blooming by flower color, Summer-blooming by flower color, Fall-blooming by flower color, Winter-blooming by flower color, Long blooming, Less than 2 feet tall, 4 feet or taller, Cold climate plants, Deep South plants, Dry sites, Wet sites, Full shade, Full sun, Seldom need division, Deer resistant, Ground covering, Naturalizing, Evergreen or semievergreen foliage, Colorful or variegated foliage, Fragrant, Attract butterflies, and Attract hummingbirds.

I hope that my mom thinks that this was a great gift. I sure did! Of course, one of the reasons I thought that this was such a great gift is because the half.com seller that I bought it from sent me a water damaged book - which wasn't the degree of condition that I ordered. I wouldn't have minded for myself, but it was to be a gift. Because of that, they graciously sent me a new one for free and told me to keep the damaged book. I gave my mom the good one, and I ended up with one for myself!

I hope that when we get a property of our own, I am able to put together a flower bed that would make my grandma proud.