Elegant Silvers: Striking Plants for Every Garden [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Jo Ann Gardner (Author), Karen Bussolini (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2005

Silver plants bring a luminous beauty to the landscape. Their distinctive colors, textures, and silhouettes enrich garden design; their ability to withstand extremes of heat, cold, drought, wind, and, for variegated silvers, shade makes them indispensable for gardeners. The geographic range of silver plants is broader than many assume. Silver conifers evoke snowy, colder regions and thrive in the most frigid sites. Even in four-season climates where they are frost tender, stunning agaves, yuccas, and echeverias can be grown outdoors in containers, then wintered over indoors, while other silvers, including tropicals like the downy-leaved Plectranthus argentatus, can be treated as annuals. In this comprehensive and inspirational compendium, silver aficionados Jo Ann Gardner and Karen Bussolini have selected and vividly illustrated the best candidates for a broad range of growing and design needs. Whether you decide to add a dash of quicksilver or the soothing perfume of an ancient herb, this in-depth guide to plants of uncommon beauty and versatility is certain to change the way you see and plant your garden.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gardner and Bussolini are a great team, bringing together decades of herbal expertise, gardening acumen, and an exciting vision of how silver foliage contributes to the impact and allure of a garden plan. Encyclopedic entries point out each plant's natural habitat, from the humid South to the frigid North, and clear advice on cultivation requirements and hardiness will help immensely in choosing the best plants for specific situations. The range of silver plant material is exciting, from drought-tolerant and deer-resistant selections to plants for sun or shade. Bussolini and Gardner reveal the merits of tactile and structural specimens, offering an inspiring trove that includes touchable perennials with downy leaves, ground-covering annuals to brighten beds and borders, herbs for fragrance, architectural succulents, and irresistible flowering shrubs. To provide backbone in the garden, a crucial design element, the entries include a host of trees, including palms with dramatic fans, the emphatic forms of majestic and dwarf conifers, and elegant deciduous species. Required reading for avid gardeners. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“Whether you decide to add a dash of quicksilver or the soothing perfume of an ancient herb, this in-depth guide to plants of uncommon beauty and versatility is certain to change the way you see and plant your garden.”

Sierra Heritage At Home Magazine

"Consistently excellent composition and color reproduction of the nearly 120 photos by coauthor Bussolini ... highly recommended."—G. D. Dreyer, Choice, September 2005 (G. D. Dreyer Choice )

"Every aspect of plants with silver foliage is covered in this valuable new book."—Graham Rice, American Gardener, July/August 2005 (Graham Rice American Gardener )

"A bible, if you will, of the increasingly popular plants with the metallic moniker."—Metropolitan Home, April 2005 (Metropolitan Home )

"Whether you decide to add a dash of quicksilver or the soothing perfume of an ancient herb, this in-depth guide to plants of uncommon beauty is certain to change the way you see and plant your garden."

(Herb Companion )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 311 pages
• Publisher: Timber Press (February 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881927031
• ISBN-13: 978-0881927030
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slightly out of date and not for Southern gardens, ......, June 29, 2005

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Elegant Silvers: Striking Plants for Every Garden (Hardcover)

Often overlooked, the so-called silver and `white' plants can provide a fabulous backdrop for other flowers and can soften the more vibrant colors such as red, orange and yellow. Some of silver plants such as various Achillea have their own lovely flowers, others are mainly grown for their foliage. Although many of the silvers do well in cooler climates where they are often found in raised beds or rock gardens, I have found it difficult to grow many of them in my wildly varying climate where summer days can be both muggy and hot and provide too much moisture or humidity (thus rotting the under leaves and branches of Lavender, Thyme, Rosemary, Santolina), or conversely, too much drought (thus killing the Ajuga).

ELEGANT SILVERS includes many photographs taken in the Denver Botanical Garden (one of my favorite places to hang out for a day or two) where dry mountain air and raised beds make the growing of "silver" alpine plants quite possible. Many of the silvers that thrive in Denver are not suitable at all for growing in Southern gardens, however, as much as I would like them to be. Other photos of items listed in the rather comprehensive `Encyclopedia' included in this book were taken in dry desert areas of the West, and are thus perfect for xeroscaping (growing in hot dry areas), and some of these plants work in my garden until I get a humid summer. (My neighbor hangs a tarp over his garden when it rains for long periods). Gardner and Bussolini provide an index explaining which plants are suitable for which kinds of conditions, but as both of them garden in the northern areas of the US (New England, New York) their attempt to describe regional conditions may be a kind of overreaching.

1 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Silver Is In Fashion., June 28, 2005

By 

Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elegant Silvers: Striking Plants for Every Garden (Hardcover)

Silver plants have a luminous beauty, as does silver hair; in fact, silver has taken the place of gold in jewelry of choice these days. The silver spectrum is similarly varied, from silver white to gleaming blues. Silvers are assets to gardeners across the land.

Silvers are chosen for the way they look and for their soothing or the energizing perfumes and for the feel of their leaves. In the past, these plants were for use medicinally, from toothpaste to the pangs of childbirth. The ruffled, gray-green horehound was used to soothe a cough -- I still use it today.

From the first to the sixteenth centuries, silvers were noted for their healing properties like sage, mostly confined to the herb repertoire until 1980s. Silver plants were considered very important visual elements for their contrast to shades of green.

Blue spruce is one of the most beautiful silver/blue trees, popular for use as a Christmas tree -- but grown outdoors, they expand and grow tall, keeping the special shade. There was a huge one directly outside a gate at the apartment building where I live, and it was cut down a few weeks ago. Not easy to grow, a lovely treasure, but this town of Knoxville, Tennessee, likes only one tree, pink/white dogwoods.

They cut down others freely as they have no sense of decorum or beauty in something which has no bright or purple flowers. This is a purple town! The Taplow Blue shrub has the look of blue spruce without the tall sculpted shape. Another name for heather is "Silver Knight." It has been used in medicinal preparations.

There is a silver dollar gum tree, The so-called "money" plant turns silver when it goes to seed and makes an ornamental grass to use for decorations. The Southern Lady fern has silver in it. There is a Spanish fir tree and blue noble species. There is silver feather maiden grass and the Spanish moss in Louisiana is a gray/dull silver.

Some are named after animals: pussytoes, rattlesnakemaster, quail, silver bluebeard, ponyfoot, coyote, wormwood, lamb's ears, hummingbird plant, donkey tail, Tasmanian devil, and hens & chicks. Not just silver plants are spectacular, but so are silver-haired ladies.