Plant Partners: Creative Plant Associations for Perennials - Hardcover

Anna Pavord has no patience for dwarf plants ("a perverse trend"), pastels ("Stop overdosing on pastels. We've had more than enough of them"), or winter gardens ("Who needs them? The pleasures of the winter garden are only for masochists"), not to mention all-white beds ("somnambulist gardening"). She has a sharp eye and a predilection for cheeky Briticisms, and she's not afraid to use either. Plant Partners is organized into seasons--the real growing seasons: signs of spring, spring turns to summer, high summer, and into autumn. Within these seasons Pavord presents 60 "star" plants that should be highlighted in the perennial bed. For each of her favorite plants she provides a supporting cast of two varieties--annuals, bulbs, or perennials--that partner particularly well with the stars, and under the same soil and light conditions. The groupings might be designed so that all of the flowers will be in bloom at once (pasqueflower with grape hyacinth and deep-purple primroses, for example), or so that when one flower's blooms are just starting to fade another's are waiting in the wings (lily-of-the-valley with a hellebore and barrenwort). A listing of "alternative" partners extends the range of choices to include more unusual plants and ones that might be more challenging to grow. Foliage is given as much consideration as blooms:

"Darling! Salmon! How brave!" exclaim the white-garden brigade as they sharpen their pruning knives for a horticultural mercy killing. You might as well fall on your garden fork there and then as try to explain that the point of the rodgersia they are looking at is not the buff-pink flower but the whirls of bronze underneath it.

But her exhortation to use foliage--as well as grasses and nonflowering perennials as "star" plants--to best advantage cannot be ignored in Plant Partners. Pavord's advice throughout is practical and opinionated. --Liana Fredley

The Tulip, the result of Anna Pavord's lifelong passion for this particular bulb, won her worldwide acclaim and almost started a second bout of tulip mania. Indeed her enthusiasm for plants, combined with her ability to evoke in words their many quirks and charms, make her one of the most entertaining yet informative of garden writers. Anna has written many highly successful books, including The Border Book and New Kitchen Garden, both published by Dorling Kindersley. In the UK, she writes regularly for the magazine Gardens Illustrated, where she is also associate editor, and contributes a weekly column to The Independent newspaper. She is a frequent radio broadcaster and has also presented her own TV series about gardening. Anna is an avid traveler, gleaning information about plants in many corners of the world. Back home in Dorset, England, she uses her large garden -- around an old rectory -- as a source of inspiration and a place where she can constantly experiment with new associations of flowers and foliage.