Taylor's Guide to Annuals (Taylor's Guide to Gardening)

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Summary: Taylor's Guide to Annuals
Review: This book is an excellent reference for anyone who would like to identfy a flower but does not know where to start. Coupled with its companion book on perennials, it is a most useful tool for the homeowner who desires a pleasant landscape. The clear vivid pictures are one of its best features. Grouping these pictures by color allows anyone who knows nothing about a flower except how it looks to be able to identify a flower according to appearance only. Once the flower is identified by its picture, a brief concise description and name are given then the reader is referred to another page for more information. The reader then finds on this other page another well written brief description along with essential growth and propagation facts about the plant. All the information is kept to the point so the reader is not bogged down with a lot of nonrelevant material. The book is directed to both the amateur gardener who just wants the facts, like the flowers common name, and also to the horticulturalist who demands the scientific name. The illustrations, charts and color guides make the book easy to understand and follow. It includes such helpful hints as how to get a garden started, different garden designs, ways to propogate plants, plus pest and disease control. The University of Missouri in Columbia recomended this book along with its companion book for one of the horticulture classes I took. Having had my degree in horticulture several years now, I still use these two books quite frequently. I have leant them to friends and neighbors several times. In fact, I am ordering a replacement since one book has not been returned to me, and I find I rely it more than I realized. Another feature that makes it enjoyable is its actual size. The book is thick with its plethera of information yet small and easy to carry around and flip through quickly. In summary, it is well written, well designed, and well illustrated. The true-to-color vivid pictures make it easy for just about anyone to identify any common flower in the United States of North America. It is a must for any plant lovers library.