50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants: Tough-but-Beautiful Plants That Anyone Can Grow by Tracy DiSabato-Aust
BUY IT NEW
- $16.95 List price$13.56 Online price$12.20 Member price(Save 28%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
Reserve it at BN.com & pick it up in 60 minutes at your local store.
Enter a zip code
(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: January 2009
- 168pp
- Sales Rank: 19,825
Buy it Used: 19 copies from $6.42 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: January 2009
- Publisher: Timber Press, Incorporated
- Format: Paperback, 168pp
- Sales Rank: 19,825
- ISBN-13: 9780881929508
- ISBN: 0881929506
Synopsis
Tracy DiSabato-Aust has taught thousands of readers how to design and maintain their gardens. Her first book—The Well-Tended Perennial Garden—is Timber's best-selling title and widely considered the bible of perennial maintenance. 50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants is packed with useful tips, practical hints, and Tracy's own gardening experience. It is sure to find a place on the shelf and in the heart of every gardener. Tracy has identified 50 show-stopping plants that anyone can grow. Each selection is a dynamic choice for nearly every garden. Even better? All 50 plants have passed Tracy's test for toughness, beauty, and durability. These are Tracy's personal favorites, chosen after years of studying how to make beautiful outdoor spaces with a minimum of maintenance.
Donna L. Davey - Library Journal
The 50 plants chosen here for their appealing characteristics and visual allure, especially to the harried gardener, variously promise heat, cold, and drought tolerance; resistance to insects, deer, and diseases; freedom from deadheading, fertilizing, staking, pruning, and frequent division; and, most of all, carefree enjoyment over multiple seasons. Getting the biggest bang for your buck in terms of ease of care and visual impact can be a hit-and-miss affair with the average garden plant, so DiSabato-Aust, a well-known garden speaker and author of The Well-Designed Mixed Garden and The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, puts her extensive knowledge to work in this nicely illustrated volume. The photographs capture the essence of each plant's foliage, arch, and color in close-ups and broader shots of border plantings. Sidebars highlight the most notable characteristics of each plant and point out hardiness zone, height and spread, sun and shade needs, and compatible plant neighbors. Recommended for all public library gardening collections.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Tracy DiSabato-Aust, an award-winning designer and a nationally recognized horticultural author, professional speaker, and consultant, has been in the landscape industry since 1978, working, studying, and teaching at gardens in Belgium, England, Canada, and the U.S. She is the owner of Horticultural Classics and Consultations—a garden design company. DiSabato-Aust has contributed articles and photographs to many national magazines, including Fine Gardening, Country Gardens, Garden Gate, Midwest Living, American Nurseryman, Real Simple, and Garden Design. Her own and her clients' gardens are regularly featured in books and magazines and on Channel 4 News in Columbus, Ohio. Extremely popular as a lecturer, Tracy has appeared on television and has been a guest on many national radio gardening programs. She resides near Columbus, Ohio.
Customer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 7Reviews: 5
- See All Reviews
50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plantsby Elag
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
July 28, 2009: I really enjoyed the photography; however, most of these plants are for a very large yard, and I live in the city of Chicago, so most of them could not be used in my garden. I was rather disappointed, since very few of the plants featured were appropriate for the city.
Excellent gardening resource with gorgeous pictures. Highly recommended for urban gardeners, no-fussby gl
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
June 04, 2009: As a novice gardener, I am drawn to gardening books with a judicious mix of beautiful pictures and helpful advice. This book caught me with its opening:
I wrote this book because you might be like me. You love to garden, but there is never enough time...I'm constantly rethinking areas of my garden and seeking beautiful yet tough plants to replace demanding ones. I refer to them affectionately as indomitable - not easily defeated, resolute, unconquerable, determined, and strong...These plants should be easy to care for but they should bring passion and excitement into our lives with their colors, textures, shapes, and scents. It's great if the plant is easy to grow, but if it's of minimal ornamental value, who really cares? -50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants by Tracy Disabato-AustDisabato-Aust selected 50 highly ornamental plants that require minimal care and are either US natives or award winners from around the world. Each plant is able to make a statement in multiple seasons because of its long lasting bloom, color, texture, form or fragrance. I'm particularly glad of this selection process since as an urban gardener, I am limited to container gardening. She points out that color doesn't just come from the blossoms, but to encourages us to look at the plant's bark and foliage and fruit as well. The book is full of helpful advice both for selecting plants and for caring for individual specimens. She developed a very useful checklist for evaluating plants and divides them into High-Impact Traits and Low-Maintenance Traits. The High-Impact Traits are: (1) multi-season interest; (2) colorful foliage; (3) long-lasting bloom; (4) outstanding texture; (5) and architectural form. The Low-Maintenance Traits are: (1) long-lived; (2) tolerant of heat and humidity; (3) cold-hardy; (4) deer resistant (not so critical for us urban gardeners); (5) resistant to insects and disease; (6) requires minimal or no deadheading; (7) prospers without heavy fertilizing; (8) doesn't require staking, infrequent or no division required for 4 or more years; (9) infrequent or no pruning required to maintain decent habit, appearance or best flowering; (10) non-invasive; and (11) drought tolerant.The beauty of this gardening book is that you can flip through its pages for a plant that catches your eye and then determine whether it would be a fit for your and your garden. I was surprised to find many of the beautiful specimens that I'd admired to be low maintenance and the book has given me ideas for both for my garden, my mother's shady garden unit in Boston and my uncle's large garden in Gloucester.I highly recommend this book for urban gardeners, novice gardeners, and gardeners who would like to spend less time tending plants and more time enjoying them. It's a great gift book as well.
loading...
loading...
loading...