[.ca] Annuals & Perennials (ISBN 1571456481)

annuals and perennials:
Annuals and Perennials is a great book for gardeners of all ages. It tells you when to grow plants, when the flowers of that plant will bloom, and where in the U.S. it will grow. With full color pictures and info on tons of plants, I gave this book a five-star rating.

The 1 book I use almost daily:
I have owned this book for 2 years and I use it almost daily during the "gardening season" and a lot through the cold times, dreaming and planning. There is also a wonderful reference table at the back of the book that lists quick statistics for each plant. (Perennial or annual, zone, bloom color, planting time & flowering season.) This book does not claim to be a landscape planning book, so knocking it for not being one is unjustified. The index is very comprehensive, even for common names. I've had no problems with it. But, to expect any book to know all of the strange, usually regional common names given to plants, as mentioned by an above reviewer, is unreasonable. I loved this book when it first arrived and I love it more all the time. I can't imagine how this book was made for such a reasonable price! I've paid much more for books with far fewer pictures. You will love this book!

Nice photos but flawed otherwise:
I bought this book thinking it would be comprehensive and a useful resource for planning the flower beds around our house, but found it to have a number of shortcomings. On the plus side, it does have lots of nice photos. However, I usually can't find the particular cultivars that it has in local greenhouses, nor does it often have photos of the cultivars that they do stock. On the con side, the worst flaw is the index, which is practically useless. Many of the plants that I have looked up are not listed by EITHER latin or common names in the index, though some of them are in fact listed in the book. In some cases, the index will refer you to another name ("see under X") but then X is not listed in the index either. It is maddening. The end result is that in many cases I cannot find anything about even common species in this book. Also, the book has very little specific information about what types of conditions each plant prefers, and how to cultivate it. This is due in part to the large number of different varieties that it contains, so that the book tends to generalize (eg, plants of the X family prefer sun or shade, depending on the variety). So that makes it much less useful. I would recommend this book only if you know a lot about gardening already and only want it as a reference to look up photos of different strains of flowers.

Fair Reference - not the best:
I bought both Annuals & Perennials, and Trees & Shrubs for considerable price and found them both lacking in listings and information. Some commonly grown plants that are excluded from this collection include: daffodils, artichokes, tulips, bamboos, chamomile, crocosmia, crocus, ostritch fern, cinimmon fern, and on, and on. I was hoping to use the books to correlate Zone information between Sunset Western Garden's system and the USDA Zone system, however, many plants that ARE listed in the Sunset book are NOT listed in the Botanica books. I'd highly recommend the Sunset Western Garden book over these two photo albums provided by Botanica. Whether you garden in the Western U.S. or not.

A lovely reference...but...:
The excitement of having a plethora of pictures of each annual and perennial is accomplished with this book. The photos are lovely. However, had the contents been organized in a longer setting(12X14) and more user-friendly reference of the plants, I would have been more forgiving in this review. The book is too small (5x8)and too compact for the enjoyment of looking for the perfect plant(s). The common names are not included and this makes for a need for ordinary identification. Kudos to the photographers.