Armitage's Garden Perennials: A
Color Encyclopedia, by Allan M. Armitage
Timber Press, 2000
Anyone with a yard or balcony garden knows the importance of perennials as the building blocks that form the base of a beautiful garden. Perennials are important to the layout of the garden because once established, they are the framework around which you can “fill in” spaces with annuals.
Recognizing the importance of perennials, every gardener should have at least one encyclopedia that features not only details but color photographs of each perennial described. Allan M. Armitage, professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia, Athens, has authored Armitage’s Garden Perennials: A Color Encyclopedia, to assist gardeners in the selection of perennials for their lawns and containers.
Armitage’s Garden Perennials is an excellent resource for gardening beginners. It features full color photographs of several examples of each perennial, alongside the text related to the perennial, so there’s no flipping between the photo section and the text sections as with many other gardening books I own.
Additionally, the indices in the back of the book are extremely useful because they list plants according to a variety of categories, including blooming season, approximate height, sun/shade conditions, flower color, and others. There are even lists of plants that are drought tolerant, aggressive plants, plants for wet and boggy places, and ground covers. Only a searchable online database could make plant selection easier.
My only quibble with Armitage’s encyclopedia is that he is inconsistent in specifying how each perennial propagates. While there is a short list in the back of “aggressive” plants, it would be nice to know for each plant whether it drops seeds to propagate or whether it spreads underground, as well as how quickly each perennial spreads. Some sort of rating of each perennial’s propagation factor (1 being slow and 5 being fast) would be useful for those of us who seek slow spreaders.
But that one quibble aside, I recommend Armitage’s Garden Perennials to all gardeners, whether you have acres to fill or simply a few pots on a balcony. Thanks to this book, you can plan for colorful flowers/foliage year round.
323 pp.
