The Texas Flowerscaper [Illustrated] [Hardcover-spiral]

Kathy Huber (Author), J. Lynn Peterson (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 2000

Gardening/Flowerscaper Series
-Flip pages
-Height and zone guides
-Watercolor illustrations for bloom, color, and texture
Kathy's creative format will delight "lazy gardeners!" Her promotion of hardy plants for Texas' unique growing climates will help gardeners succeed where they may have failed before using nationally written horticultural guides.

--Brenda Beust Smith, Houston's "Lazy Gardener"
Kathy Huber's Flowerscaper will bring to Texas gardeners an easy-to0use, practical-yet-informative source for plant selection. Her choice of plants is excellent." --Sally McQueen Squire, Houston's "Bulb Lady"
Garden color comes alive from the pen of a top Texas gardening writer Kathy Huber. A must read . . . a must addition to your gardening library. --Bill Zak, KTRH Gardenline program host
(19960503)

Editorial Reviews

Review

They like to feel Art between their fingers and the scent of a rose bud close to their nose. Kathy Huber wants gardeners to step back and view the whole landscape. As encouragement, Ms. Huber, garden editor for the Houston Chronicle has put together a gem of a book. The title is unwieldy: The Texas Flowerscaper: Seasonal Guide to Bloom, Height, Color and Texture (Gibbs-Smith, $ 22). The book isn't. Ms. Huber's work allows the reader to compare and contrast more than 400 flowers, shrubs, herbs, ornamental trees and tropical plants - each geared to weather in Texas. Its ingenuity is in its arrangement. Using color-coded pages, Ms. Huber classifies plants as one of three types: warm weather, cool weather and year-round. Each plant is presented on a tri-cut page that allows the reader to experiment with all sorts of combinations. How about sweet violet, with its dark green rounded leaves and purple flowers, next to yellow-and-white Shasta daises? Or the lavender-blue blooms of aster with the gray-green, pointed foliage of rosemary. The potential combinations are endless. Each section includes the height of the plant, how it can be propagated, how much sun it likes, how and where to plant, the best fertilizer to use, how to combat common diseases, and hundreds of other tips. I particularly like the author's decision to use drawings rather than photographs. Each plant is illustrated in two ways, in the ground and up close. And the drawings by J. Lynn Peterson are beautifully done. My main complaint is the book's size. The pages measure less than 7 by 8 inches; each plant takes up a third of that space. The index, with its minuscule entries, is downright awful. I want more. Of course, like many gardeners, I'm greedy. More varieties. More space. And more practical gardening books like The Texas Flowerscaper. (Craig Flournoy Dallas Morning News )

From the Back Cover

Gardening/Flowerscaper Series -Flip pages -Height and zone guides -Watercolor illustrations for bloom, color, and texture Kathy's creative format will delight "lazy gardeners!" Her promotion of hardy plants for Texas' unique growing climates will help gardeners succeed where they may have failed before using nationally written horticultural guides. --Brenda Beust Smith, Houston's "Lazy Gardener" Kathy Huber's Flowerscaper will bring to Texas gardeners an easy-to0use, practical-yet-informative source for plant selection. Her choice of plants is excellent." --Sally McQueen Squire, Houston's "Bulb Lady" Garden color comes alive from the pen of a top Texas gardening writer Kathy Huber. A must read . . . a must addition to your gardening library. --Bill Zak, KTRH Gardenline program host

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover-spiral: 144 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith (December 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879057068
• ISBN-13: 978-0879057060
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,845,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Texas Flowerscaper, March 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Texas Flowerscaper (Hardcover-spiral)

I have lived in Texas for 15 years, this is a must have selection for your garden. The Texas flowerscaper gives you great references as well as care for each plant. Also many tips about which plants need alot of water for each region. Excellent book!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Help!, July 11, 2006

By 

Susan Bowers (Lakeway, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Texas Flowerscaper (Hardcover-spiral)

This book is incredibly useful. It tells you everything you need to know and is well illustrated. It shows a close up of the plant and a view of the entire plant. But the best thing is that the pages are split three ways according to the plant's height. So you can mix and match pages to see how different height plants work together. It also has all the information about plants, sun, water, propagation, etc. I recommend this book highly to anyone landscaping in Texas and many of the plants work in other states as well.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unique, creative, and fun, February 10, 2004

By 

D. Smart "scifigaltx" (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Texas Flowerscaper (Hardcover-spiral)

High marks for creativity, uniqueness and just plain fun. The book is spiral bound so it will lay flat. This makes it easy to use. More importantly each page has been divided horizontally into three independent sections. The flowers on the top section of the divided page are tall with a height range of 3-6 foot. The flowers in the middle section of the divided page are in the medium height range of 1-3 feet. The flowers on the bottom third of the divided page are of a low height ranging from 1 inch to 1 foot. So by choosing different top, middle and bottom sections you can get an idea of how the staggered heights of the flowers in your bed would appear simultaneously. By flipping back and forth between different choices for the top, middle, and bottom sections (which move independently of one another because of the division into three seperate sections) you can compare various color, height, and texture combinations. Alternatively use it to compare flowers that bloom in the cool season, those that bloom in the warm season, and those that bloom year round and get an idea of how your bed will appear over time as the seasons change.

There are 138 tall, 138 medium and 138 short flowering plants illustrated. Happily this is unique entries, that is, there is not 20 separate entries for tulips. So you are being introduced to many lesser-known varieties of flowering plants for Texas.

The general information is printed on a soothing happy shade of yellow paper. The wording is informative without being dry.

I am not awarding 5 stars for two reasons. First the illustrations are hand painted. While it is great that there is a close up of the bloom, as well as an illustration of the entire plant, this is not as informative as an actual photograph. Secondly because of the split page structure there is only a single paragraph for each plant listing. This leaves out some important information, such as pest problems (I see that disease problems are mentioned.)

I recommend this book for its fun factor. It would make a great gift for any Texas gardener. Give it a try!