Product Description

Magical planting suggestions from today's most compelling garden writer.

Herbaceous perennials are the star performers in the garden. But to create maximum impact they need the right partners, and knowing which plant to put with which is an art that often eludes even the most knowledgeable of gardeners. Here, Anna Pavord helps to solve this tantalizing problem by suggesting 60 plants that she feels deserve a place in every garden -- her star plants -- and to accompany them, two ideal partners. She shows, season by season, how to create irresistible planting associations that juxtapose texture, shape, color, and scent. In these small-scale recipes she uses perennials, annuals, and bulbs that either perform simultaneously or dovetail to provide interest for most of the year. To extend the options, she also gives scores of alternatives for each combination.

Stunning photographs and Anna's unique ability to awaken us to the delights and idiosyncrasies of these, her favorite plants, work together to provide a marvelous source of planting ideas. These can be visited time and time again, whether we want merely to fill one small gap, transform an awkward corner, or start a whole new border from scratch.

Amazon.com Review

Anna Pavord has no patience for dwarf plants ("a perverse trend"), pastels ("Stop overdosing on pastels. We've had more than enough of them"), or winter gardens ("Who needs them? The pleasures of the winter garden are only for masochists"), not to mention all-white beds ("somnambulist gardening"). She has a sharp eye and a predilection for cheeky Briticisms, and she's not afraid to use either. Plant Partners is organized into seasons--the real growing seasons: signs of spring, spring turns to summer, high summer, and into autumn. Within these seasons Pavord presents 60 "star" plants that should be highlighted in the perennial bed. For each of her favorite plants she provides a supporting cast of two varieties--annuals, bulbs, or perennials--that partner particularly well with the stars, and under the same soil and light conditions. The groupings might be designed so that all of the flowers will be in bloom at once (pasqueflower with grape hyacinth and deep-purple primroses, for example), or so that when one flower's blooms are just starting to fade another's are waiting in the wings (lily-of-the-valley with a hellebore and barrenwort). A listing of "alternative" partners extends the range of choices to include more unusual plants and ones that might be more challenging to grow. Foliage is given as much consideration as blooms:

"Darling! Salmon! How brave!" exclaim the white-garden brigade as they sharpen their pruning knives for a horticultural mercy killing. You might as well fall on your garden fork there and then as try to explain that the point of the rodgersia they are looking at is not the buff-pink flower but the whirls of bronze underneath it.

But her exhortation to use foliage--as well as grasses and nonflowering perennials as "star" plants--to best advantage cannot be ignored in Plant Partners. Pavord's advice throughout is practical and opinionated. --Liana Fredley