Cottage Garden Annuals: Grown from Seed for Summer-Long Colour [Hardcover]

Clive Lane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997

This guide concentrates on the plants that have been the stalwarts of the cottage garden for over 100 years and includes improved forms, cultivars and hybrids. Its main focus is a detailed look at traditional annuals and how to use and care for them. The book also covers planting in shady and sunny places, choosing plants for containers and the creative use of colour for subtlety or more extrovert effects. Propagation, pests and diseases, and growing plants for difficult areas are also included.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is an essentially British book, filled with charming photos of bungalows surrounded by a riot of annual flowers. These old-fashioned annuals are the rangy, colorful, sweetly scented flowers that evoke nostalgia for a grandma's garden that most of us never knew, but that we can grow ourselves with the help of this book. Everything old is new again: many of the flowers here, like castor oil bean, celosia, and abutilon, have been used for decades in traditional British gardens, and they're the hot new annuals of today. Clive Lane gives detailed instructions, complete with drawings, on growing annuals from seed, explaining techniques like pricking out and stratification. What is most unusual and useful about this book are the lengthy lists of annuals for specific situations or with special characteristics; for instance, annual vines to grow for flowers, annuals for fragrance and cutting, and annuals that give at least three months of bloom. Why choose this book from among the many others on annuals? It makes gardening look like sheer, creative delight, with window boxes packed with colorful annuals, front gardens with such a fluff of annuals that it is hard to find the stepping stones, and theme gardens such as "The Edwardian Hot Bed Border." --Valerie Easton

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: David & Charles UK (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0715304291
• ISBN-13: 978-0715304297
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 7.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL BOOK AND PICTURES WITH PRACTICAL INFORMATION, June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cottage Garden Annuals: Grown from Seed for Summer-Long Colour (Hardcover)

THIS EXCELLENT BRITISH BOOK LISTS OLD-FASHIONED ANNUALS FROM A TO Z. IT OFFERS THE READER INTERESTING HISTORICAL INFORMATION ON EACH PLANT AND DISCUSSES GROWTH HABITS AND PLANTING SUGGESTIONS. THE BOOK SERVES AS A GREAT PLANTING GUIDE AND A MARVELOUS PICTORIAL REFERENCE. I KNOW OF NO OTHER BOOK OF ITS KIND.