Customer Reviews

The Cutting Garden

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first found this book at my public library. I was skeptical at first because growing, rather than cutting flowers is more my thing. But it looked pretty, so I took it home. Wow! What a surprise. I like it so much that I logged on and ordered it from Amazon immediately.

While many of the flower arrangements were not to my taste, the section on "Flowers and Foliage Through the Seasons" is worth the price of the book. Lavishly photographed and thoroughly documented with varieties and cultivation notes, this section contains a number of more unusual complementary foliage plants that a relative beginning gardener like myself might not think to plant. From Euphorbias and Eryngium to "lime green" Nicotiana and the unusual acid green zinnia "Envy" there are dozens of fantastic plants to complement some of the more traditional border flowers.

Sections covered in the book are:

Planning and stocking the Garden
-includes planting schemes and cultivation tips

Flower Arranging
-my least favorite part of the book, but the notes on conditioning different cut flowers are great.

Flowers and Foliage through the Seasons.
-Excellent reference section. The beautiful photos are very detailed(and to scale, you can actually figure out how big one plant is in relation to another!) and grouped by season and color scheme.

Recommended for the beginning/intermediate flower gardener!

I too checked this one out from the library and promptly purchased it as a reference for my own book collection. I was most inspired by the variety of plants the author highlighted for arranging...I hadn't thought about a lot of the things I already have growing in my own garden in that light before. I also liked her descriptions of the composition of the arrangements.

I found this lovely book at the local library a few years back. One page in and I new I had discovered treasure! This book is wonderful. It is so full of helpful information and useful tips which are rarely if ever available on cut flower varieties outside the traditional florist scope. I reference this book almost daily in my floral business. I highly recommend it!

It's quite true that this book shows some lovely and varied flower arrangements. But what concerns me greatly is the picture on page 89 of a grapevine wreath with candles burning beneath it on a mantel. THIS IS A BAD FIRE HAZARD. Please, don't follow the author's example in this - it's too high a risk. Dry, twiggy decorations should never be placed this close to open flame. Nor is it appropriate to place a candle, without a globe around it, to be burned in the center of an arrangement as shown on page 86. Even a green arrangement can be dried to the burning point by a candle flame that close.

I wish this was presented as an example of what not to do, instead of as the successful finished product the author shows it as.