Cutting Gardens

One of the gardener's greatest pleasures is harvesting fragrant, colorful blossoms throughout the growing season. To bring fresh flowers indoors - with their heavenly scents, exquisite colors, and wonderful shapes and textures - is to bring indoors a little piece of paradise. Growing flowers especially for cutting is not difficult, and the range of suitable plants is surprisingly diverse, including many species of annuals, perennials, bulbs, herbs, and ornamental grasses, as well as vines, shrubs, and even trees. And there are cutting flowers that can thrive in a wide range of soil conditions. Filled with hundreds of lush color photos of gardens and plants, Cutting Gardens will inspire you to plant the flowers you love. If you're new to gardening, you can begin with easy-to-grow marigolds and zinnias, and if you're more experienced, you'll find advice on how to grow such finicky favorites as delphiniums and phlox. Chapter One offers concrete advice on planning - the first step toward achieving the cutting garden of your dreams. And a handy Flower Color Guide lets you see at a glance the full range of colors available for hundreds of different species. Garden plans for 10 different kinds of cutting gardens are featured in Chapter Two. Depending on your own garden, you can either copy the plans provided or adapt one or more to your own landscape. Important advice in Chapter Three demonstrates how to grow the flowers, from preparing the soil to cleaning up in the fall, suggestions designed to ensure success. And in Chapter Four, you'll learn how to cut, condition, and arrange your flowers so that they last as long as possible. The balance of this useful and inspiring book is devoted to anillustrated encyclopedia of 200 plants, providing a handy reference that lists the hardiness, growing conditions, best time for planting, care, conditioning of each plant, and its most popular uses in a bouquet or arrangement. With this feature alone, Cutting Gardens is destined to become one of your most favorite and frequently consulted gardening books.