Description:
This is an essentially British book, filled with charming photos of bungalows surrounded by a riot of annual flowers. These old-fashioned annuals are the rangy, colorful, sweetly scented flowers that evoke nostalgia for a grandma's garden that most of us never knew, but that we can grow ourselves with the help of this book. Everything old is new again: many of the flowers here, like castor oil bean, celosia, and abutilon, have been used for decades in traditional British gardens, and they're the hot new annuals of today. Clive Lane gives detailed instructions, complete with drawings, on growing annuals from seed, explaining techniques like pricking out and stratification. What is most unusual and useful about this book are the lengthy lists of annuals for specific situations or with special characteristics; for instance, annual vines to grow for flowers, annuals for fragrance and cutting, and annuals that give at least three months of bloom. Why choose this book from among the many others on annuals? It makes gardening look like sheer, creative delight, with window boxes packed with colorful annuals, front gardens with such a fluff of annuals that it is hard to find the stepping stones, and theme gardens such as "The Edwardian Hot Bed Border." --Valerie Easton
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