Backyard Bouquets: Growing Great Flowers for Simple Arrangements [Paperback]

Ethel Brennan (Author), Georgeanne Brennan (Author), Kathryn Kleinman (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1998

Acclaimed garden writer Georgeanne Brennan makes growing flowers for intimate bouquets a simple pleasure everyone can enjoy. Illustrated with photographs by Kathryn Kleinman and filled with inspiring ideas from floral stylist Ethel Brennan, Backyard Bouquets is both a how-to gardening book and a guide to the rewarding art of flower arrangement. From disk- and dome-shaped blossoms to wildflowers to "stately stems" and "artful forms," Georgeanne Brennan explains the role each kind of flower plays in a bouquet, then gives step-by-step directions for growing each type in its many variations. The idea is to cultivate a selection of hearty, fast-growing flowers, fillers, and vines -- in a variety of complementary shapes, colors, and sizes -- so there's always something fresh and pretty on hand, all through the year. Sunflowers, cosmos, lupines, nasturtiums, irises, sweetpeas, daffodils, and tulips are just the beginning. Uncomplicated and spontaneous, this book gives gardeners the tools they need to brighten any room in the house with wonderful flowers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A lot of flower arranging books are intimidating: the pictures are beautiful and the instructions may even be good, but if you don't have a Limoges vase and an armful of perfect rosebuds, you'll never be able to achieve similar results. Backyard Bouquets is a book for people who have, or want, gloriously messy real-life gardens full of inexpensive annuals and (whisper) even a few pretty weeds, and who put their flowers in anything that won't leak. It's a beautiful and friendly book, with good planting, watering, and cutting directions. While only the color principles of flower arranging are addressed in the text, the many bouquets pictured are uniformly gorgeous in texture and proportion, whether they're placed in old jelly glasses, coffee cans, or the occasional ceramic ginger jar--textbook examples of what you imagine while you're putting the seeds in the ground. --Barrie Trinkle

Review

Many people love a cheery floral arrangement but never have enough flowers on hand. Backyard Bouquets, by Georgeanne Brennan, suggests ways to have something lovely growing all year. The softcover volume from Chronicle Books explains how to start and maintain a cutting garden of fast-growing flowers. There are even suggestions for winter arrangements. [A] beautifully photographed book.... The Gazette

Reviews From:

California Garden

Canadian House & Home

Cutting flowers from one's own garden is a major reward for gardeners and this book describes exactly which plants, usually annuals, suit this purpose. Beginning with general planting and gardening information, it proceeds to an organization of blossoms by shapes and sizes useful for effective flower designs. Thus the first section on Discs and Domes includes everything needed to be known about sunflowers, sinnias, cosmos, coreopsis, and scabiosas. Airy fillers include Queen Anne's lace, bachelor buttons, nigella, and Cleome.

Handsome color photos of the flowers, on their own and in beautiful arrangements, could be enough to inspire anyone to dedicate all possible space in the garden to this purpose. Emphasizing that cutting flowers thrive easily in containers or window boxes, the author devotes much space to the value of interesting containers, both for growing and arranging flowers.

Brennan, a food and garden writer, and former co-owner of a seed company, shares her knowledge in this ABC of gardening (plants range from Alba poppies to zinnias), giving advice on planting (seeds, seedlings or bulbs), growing, harvesting, and assembling flowers in artful arrangements. With lots of beautiful pictures for the non-gardener to enjoy, and facts enough to satisfy the greenest thumb, this book deserves a place indoors.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811814130
• ISBN-13: 978-0811814133
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #323,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty book for coffee table gardeners, May 18, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Backyard Bouquets: Growing Great Flowers for Simple Arrangements (Paperback)

This is a very nice book with lots of beautifully styled photographs of common flowers in folksy arrangements. Lovely as a source of inspiration for what to grow next. The text covers about 20 perennial, annual and bulb flowers and their varieties with the chapters grouped by the flower shape. The orientation here is on the "Bouquet" part of the title rather than the "Backyard" part. Pretty minimalist gardening techniques. Here's a sample on how to grow bulbs: "Plant them touching each other, water them and wait for the green shoots to show." If you see what I mean.

The book is beautifully bound in the new soft cover style with attached dust jacket. The photographs are clear and display well on the non-reflective paper. The type face is small and difficult to read with only a single column on each wide page.

Buy the book for inspiration but you'll be relying on something else for how to plant and grow.

1.0 out of 5 stars Plain Plain Plain Except for the Cover, April 18, 2006

By 

Bill Noon (Daly City, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Backyard Bouquets: Growing Great Flowers for Simple Arrangements (Paperback)

The cover bouquet is the only thing worthy and inspiring out of all the arrangements. Most are plain with only one or two different kinds of plants in them. And even the few that has more variety still looks ordinary and not that pretty. Sigh, at least the cover is really good to look at.