[.ca] The Garden Color Book: 343,000 Combinations for Your Garden (ISBN 0811828344)

From Amazon.com:
The colors alone are enough to guarantee this book being a favorite for any flower enthusiast with a green thumb. The Garden Color Book is a feast for both the eyes and the imagination, and it's unique flip-book style (lifted from those mix-and-match children's picture books) make the possible combinations seem endless. While you'll be eager to skip ahead and get right into playing with the page strips, there's some important information in the beginning, including the key code for the various needs of each plant, zone hardiness, light and water requirements, and special concerns. So once you've paid your dues, let the fun begin! Each page of plants is cut into three horizontal strips, one level each for tall, medium, and short plants, and then separated into color groupings--the vivid indigos, bright oranges, and cool silver foliage are photographed beautifully, shown off to perfection with clear close ups. The back of each preceding strip contains squares of information about each plant, so as you're admiring, you merely have to glance to the left to learn whether it's appropriate for your space and conditions. With a clear plastic cover and sturdy spiral binding, this is a book to take outside with you, or pass around the garden club for group inspiration. --Jill Lightner

Not that useful:
I had hoped to use this book to look up specific perennials and compare their colors, but most of the flowers I had in mind were not included in the book. There are 639 plants covered, not just perennials, but annuals, bulbs, vines, and shrubs as well. So considering that there are thousands of varieties of flowers, the chances of finding a particular flower are slim. This book is better used without a specific plant in mind, but to browse through to get ideas of plants of a particular color. Also, there seems to be a warm climate bias. Many of the plants (not just annuals) are for zones 8 and up. I think northern gardeners would find this a frustrating book to use.

The perfect format:
Wow...what a lot of fun. The three strips of mix-and-match flip pages are the perfect interactive format for letting your own eye experiment with different color combinations. The consistent quality of the photographs and color printing make it easy to compare how even subtle shifts in color have a powerful design impact. The author's own remarkable plant combinations on each strip are fascinating in themselves. Not just pretty pictures either- the back of each strip identifies the plant, descibes its culture and growing habits and also offers some very good suggestions for plant combinations. One of my all-time favorite garden design books.

Most Helpful Garden Planning Tool:
This book solves the problem for so many of us weekend gardeners who are looking for colorful combinations for our beds that work together, but don't have the time to sit and match pictures of plants to get the color scheme correct. Unlike most gardening books that provide you with garden designs too cluttered with foliage to get the impact of the flowers' colors, this book gives you combinations that work in one reference source. It's easy to use, providing a great variety of plants and information for any gardener, but the most useful point is the garden color palette it provides. This book is well worth the purchase just in the time it saves me that I used to spend planting and then transplanting plants to different locations because they didn't work with the surrounding bed. There is nothing more jarring to the eye than looking at a garden bed and seeing that one color that just doesn't work with the others. This is a perfect book for any gardener, from beginner to expert.

Fun with this great interactive book.:
This book is great! It is full of beautiful color photograph strips that you can organize to identify compatible blooms. Plus each item comes with an acurate desciption of the flower and its care. Highly Recommended!