I bought this hefty (expanded edition) book because, a while back, I decided to create a new bed containing perennials, rather than flowering shrubs and trees. To this end, I cut down an ugly Leylandii, which I had come to think of as a weed (“a plant in the wrong” place – but is there ever a right place for a Leylandii?). After preparing the ground, I took to this book in a major way. OK, Tracy DiSabatoAust is a garden designer, so I can’t hope to compete with her (yet), but it seems to me that this may be one of the best guides on how to create borders full of perennials with a minimum of maintenance.
In this respect, there is no doubt The Well-Tended Perennial Garden is thorough. It covers all the essential techniques, such as deadheading, thinning, disbudding, cutting, renovation and so on. And I suspect that the only reason why she doesn’t refer to the ‘Chelsea chop’ is that she is American (but no one’s perfect). It also contains a plethora of examples of suitable perennials for your garden, with most (if not all) you need to know about using them in your borders.
This includes appendices offering monthly planting schedules and when to apply those techniques to maintain your new plants. There are also lists of plants for places and conditions that is such an important part of gardening today, ever since Beth Chatto created the expression “Right plant, right place”. And what is the point of a book without pictures? (Don’t answer that.) This guide apparently has 200 added extra full colour photographs since the first edition.
And I have had quite of lot of success following the guide’s advice, whether it be using Campanula latilobia together with tall Rudbeckias, or coping with aggressive, voracious Acanthus. My understanding is that the author is most well known as an author and speaker but has worked in gardens from the US to Canada, Belgium and the UK and it shows. As for this book, I recommend it as an invaluable reference guide, rather than a sit-down-and-read tome. But that doesn’t stop me from reading the relevant bits during long Winter evenings, dreaming of sunnier and warmer days.
The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques, by Tracy DiSabatoAust, Timber Press Inc, Oregon/London, 189 pages (Hardback), ISBN 13-978-0-88192-803-7
