Have you ever wished you could bring a rainbow to your backyard and keep it all summer? If so, you could plant your own perennial garden. It will bring bright colors and beauty to your house year after year, whether you fill a few pots or fill your entire backyard. Follow these step-by-step instructions for planting a perennial garden, from figuring out which plants will grow best where you live to where you should plant each seed. As little green shoots stick up through the dirt to greet the sun and then turn into colorful blossoms, you will be glad for every minute you spent on your garden. It’s the best way to capture a rainbow of your very own!

“A veritable goldmine for gardeners.” —Plant Talk We’ve all seen gorgeous perennial gardens packed with color, texture, and multi-season interest. Designed by a professional and maintained by a crew, they are aspirational bits of beauty too difficult to attempt at home. Or are they? The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden makes a design-magazine-worthy garden achievable at home. The new, simplified approach is made up of hardy, beautiful plants grown on a 10x14 foot grid. Each of the 62 garden plans combines complementary plants that thrive together and grow as a community. They are designed to make maintenance a snap. The garden plans can be followed explicitly or adjusted to meet individual needs, unlocking rich perennial landscape designs for individualization and creativity.

A personal selection of reliable hardy perennials for every gardener - the expert as well as the beginner. Descriptions of over 800 reliable perennials with close-up photographs and full cultivation information.

Offers planting plans and plant descriptions to maximize the effects of color in a perennial garden

“This practical guide is lush with clear, step-by-step advice.” —Real Simple Whether you are a new gardener or a green thumb, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is here to help you successfully plan, plant, and tend your garden. This hardworking guide includes thorough details on the essential practices of perennial care—included deadheading, pinching, and thinning—along with growing information for specific species and cultivars, on-trend garden design advice, a monthly planting and maintenance schedule, and details on native plants and gardening for wildlife. The Well-Tended Perennial Garden will be your ally in the quest for a beautiful, well-maintained garden.

Essential Perennials focuses on what every gardener needs to know to choose from the thousands of perennials available, and care for the ones you already have. This A-to-Z guide is packed with more than 2,700 plants, with each entry listing flower color, bloom time, foliage characteristics, size, and light and temperature requirements. Each profile is supported by stunning color photography that showcases the flower and foliage that make each plant unique.

Using full-color photos, the author shows you 272 perennials -- arranged according to month of bloom -- to grow in your garden so you can have wonderful color and texture from March through November -- and even winter interest throughout the coldest months of the year.

With more than 180,000 copies sold since its original publication, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden has proven itself to be one of the most useful tools a gardener can have. Now, in this expanded edition, there's even more to learn from and enjoy. This is the first, and still the most thorough, book to detail essential practices of perennial care such as deadheading, pinching, cutting back, thinning, disbudding, and deadleafing, all of which are thoroughly explained and illustrated. More than 200 new color photographs have been added to this revised edition, showing perennials in various border situations and providing images for each of the entries in the A-to-Z encyclopedia of important perennial species. In addition, there is a new 32-page journal section, in which you can enter details, notes, and observations about the requirements and performance of perennials in your own garden. Thousands of readers have commented that The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is one of the most useful and frequently consulted books in their gardening libraries. This new, expanded edition promises to be an even more effective ally in your quest to create a beautiful, healthy, well-maintained perennial garden.

Offers advice on selecting plants, planning a garden layout, preparing the soil, and planting and tending a garden, and suggests theme gardens and family projects.

Originally published: Dallas, Tex.: Taylor Pub. Co., c1989.