Gardening Perennial Plants Book Review: Perennials for the Backyard Gardener

Perennials for the Backyard Gardener, written by Patricia Turcotte, would be an excellent investment for your gardening perennial plants library. The book is divided into two main sections. Part one deals with designing and planning perennial gardens, while part two profiles perennial plants (divided into five categories: bulbs, low ground covers, middle-range perennials, high-growing perennials and biennials).

The book is written in an easy to read style, and is filled with drawings and photographs to illustrate topics and provide examples. The author tries to anticipate what kind of questions perennial gardeners might have, and provide sensible answers to these questions. Some of the sections I found most useful dealt with designing with perennials and propagation.

One downside of the book is that it focuses heavily on perennial flowers. Perennial vegetable species are not mentioned at all, nor are many evergreen perennial plants profiled in the book. Still, much of the information about planting, propagating and caring for your perennial plants are applicable across the board, and because of this I feel this is an excellent resource on gardening perennial plants.