Sensational Bouquets. Christian Tortu. Photographs by Sylvain Thomas. Text by Corine Delahaye. Abrams, New York, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $45. Buy this Book

Whether or not a garden surrounds it, every house needs Flowers A to Z: Buying, Growing, Cutting, Arranging by floral designer Cecelia Heffernan. At first glance, it looks like a coffee table book. Its size—97/8 by 137/8 inches—and the beauty of the more than 400 color photographs would support that conclusion. Nevertheless, the wealth of information it contains makes it the ultimate floral reference book. The encyclopedic entries contain both beautiful and informative photographs and practical advice.

A godsend for the many people who love flowers but don’t know all of their names, each entry lists names, colors, and varieties available for each and whether or not a flower is fragrant. For anyone who orders from a florist or is planning a wedding, this book is especially useful.

Flower arrangers at any level of skill and experience will use this helpful reference as a how-to. It includes everything anyone needs to know about conditioning cut flowers, the supplies necessary to create arrangements and how to use them, and the mechanics of floral design. Along with tips for arranging and growing the flowers, there is information about how long each flower will last in an arrangement and the availability of plants around the year.

Flowers A to Z is the perfect holiday gift book for gardeners, flower arrangers—both novice and advanced—and people who simply love flowers.

If Flowers A to Z is the ultimate reference, Sensational Bouquets by Christian Tortu is grand inspiration. Tortu is a French designer known worldwide for his innovative approach to the art of flower arranging. The photographs of Tortu’s work show a sophisticated interpretation of nature. The exquisite beauty of all growing plants—from orchids to field grasses and Paulownia fruits to squash blossoms—is displayed in arrangements that will inspire hobbyists as well as professionals.

Tortu combines simple elements with great artistry, choosing for each arrangement just the right vase to enhance superbly the flower and fruit selections, and he always manages to achieve an element of surprise. The spectacular combinations nudge the creative spirit in all of us.

The photographs by Sylvain Thomas are as stunning as the text by Corine Delahaye is inspirational and thoughtful. At the end of the book are practical pages with the bouquet photographs reduced and each and every plant identified. This is a book to be savored.—Anne Brooks

Anne Brooks is a floral designer and lecturer who maintains her garden, Hollywalk, in Brookeville, Maryland.

Pioneers of American Landscape Design. Edited by Charles A. Birnbaum and Robin Karson. McGraw Hill, New York, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $59.95. Buy this Book

This book is the important reference we have needed for a long time. A volume of breadth, depth, and excellence, it pulls together the diverse and fascinating story of American landscape design.

In the hefty collection of books on our gardening shelves by famous British authors, there is no complete account of the development of our national landscape. Too little space is devoted to our college campuses, the curves in our parkways, and the gentle slopes of our cemeteries, but this much-needed work fills that void.

An alphabetical parade of 160 names proceeds from “Abbott, Stanley William (1908–1975)” through “Yoch, Florence (1890–1972).” More than 100 distinguished and dedicated authors have summarized the lives and major works of their subjects. Each entry—usually two or three pages—is followed by a bibliography with comments and a list of relevant primary documents and their locations.

The biographies reveal surprising details about even well-known gardens. For example, the elliptical hornbeam hedge at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., often attributed to Beatrix Farrand, is described as Alden Hopkins’ “modification” of the Farrand design. In turn, Donald Parker and Ralph Griswold, we learn, completed Hopkins’ plans for the east lawn gardens of the University of Virginia after his death. The lives and plans of the featured designers frequently intersected, and the book cross-references these events.

Landscape plans, oil portraits, black- and-white photographs, engravings, and maps from every possible collection and archive bring to life a vast inventory of varied landscapes—some extant, some long vanished, some never realized. We see Lester Rowntree, known for her early appreciation of California natives, standing with her faithful burro on a collecting trip into the backcountry. James C. Rose appears holding a model of his house he made from scraps while stationed at Okinawa during World War II. A striking black-and-white study of the Willis Ward estate in Montecito, California, features two unmatched lawn chairs in the foreground of a vista culminating in the Santa Inez Mountains. The range of eloquent and evocative images documents the subtle changes in the American landscape over the centuries as fully as the words of the text.

My only complaint about Pioneers of American Landscape Design is that not all the photographs are dated. It would have been helpful to know the year of each photograph, where possible, because gardens and landscapes are notoriously subject to change and revision. Some of the images appear to have been taken fairly recently, while others are clearly archival.

At the end of the book is a list of “Sites Accessible To the Public,” with addresses and telephone numbers. A discreet symbol alerts readers to sites available only by appointment. Some entries, such as that for Benjamin Bannecker’s overall plan of Washington, D.C., even suggest where to find the best vantage point.

A book of this importance will, I’m sure, translate into action. Readers will consume the text, pore over the photos, and visit the existing designs. Some will campaign to save remnants of significant landscapes in their own neighborhoods. Those who take the time to fully explore this significant addition to our national library will find they eye our landscapes with a whole new range of understanding and appreciation.—Lucy Coggin

Lucy Coggin is site administrator for the George Washington University Landscape Design Certificate Program at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia.

Armitage's Manual of Annuals, Biennials, and Half-Hardy Perennials. Allen M. Armitage. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $39.95. Buy this Book

A screaming gap in my garden library shelf has been filled by Armitage’s Manual of Annuals, Biennials, and Half-Hardy Perennials. Gardeners have long needed a really comprehensive and affordable encyclopedic reference to plants of brief longevity, and now we have it.

From the outset, Armitage crisply sets forth the Problem With Annuals Today. “The flower breeding industry,” he writes in his not-to-be-missed and occasionally hilarious preface, “spent millions of dollars successfully improving the habits, color, and availability of impatiens, geraniums, and petunias for the landscaper and gardener, and as a result, other annuals receded from the American landscape.” He confesses that he himself has been one of those floral researchers. But, “the tide has turned,” and Armitage gives credit to us—the plantaholics: “Because of the gardener, not the industry, dozens of more unusual annuals are now available in the local garden shop.”

Armitage’s manual is the best guide yet to this new world of possibility. The book itself is of workmanlike design, set in a clear typeface just a squidge too small for easiest reading. Still, if the type were larger, the book would be, too, and one of its charms is that it is small enough to trot around the garden center with.

In an A-to-Z section that begins with Abelmoschus and ends with Zinnia, Armitage tells you the genus name, how to pronounce it, a common name if it has one, the plant’s family, its sun, shade, site, and water requirements (if noteworthy), plus general seed-collecting and germinating tips. Furthermore, each species entry also has its own key to pronunciation, common names, average height and spread (something you hardly ever see in articles on annuals, including my own), flowering time, flower or foliage color, and geographical site of origin. Best of all, the text is liberally interlarded with Armitage’s editorial comments, drawn from his experience as a plant breeder and world traveler.

For me, the table of contents is misleading. You come away with the impression that the manual is organized according to biennials, half-hardy perennials, winter annuals, shade-tolerant plants, fragrant plants, climbing plants, and everlastings, but these are merely the titles of the specialty plant lists in the appendix. The bulk of the book is comprised of the 492-page “A-to-Z Genera” section. Additionally, there are indexes to botanical names and common names at the back, but no general subject index.

I was disappointed, at first, to find most of the illustrations to be black-and-white line drawings. (The color photographs I had been hoping for are clumped together in the middle of the book.) But on closer look, I found the drawings to be exquisite.

There are many treasures in this compilation, though inevitably, Armitage leaves out a few of my favorites, such as the annual members of the genera Corydalis and Dianthus. But by and large, the this book—whether you are an experienced gardener or an intelligent beginner—will make you want to run right out and hammer at the doors of your local nursery or write away madly for every obscure catalog you can find.—Rand B. Lee

A garden writer and lecturer who lives in Sante Fe, New Mexico, Rand B. Lee is author of Pleasures of the Cottage Garden.

Gardener's Books


There are many more new books on the market than we have time or space to review, but here are a few that recently caught our eye. Through a partnership with amazon.com, AHS members can order these and other books at a discount by linking to amazon.com through Society's Web site at www.ahs.org.

Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawai'i. David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $65. Buy this Book

The captivating photographs of Hawai'i’s flora and fauna in this oversized volume lend it the air of a coffee table book. But the text reveals the authors’ serious purpose: to document the loss of Hawai'ian biodiversity and describe ongoing efforts to stem the tide. Each of the plants and animals illustrated is rare or in danger of extinction.

A Place of Beauty, The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish Colony. Alma M. Gilbert and Judith Tankard. Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, California, 2000. Publisher's price, hardcover: $29.95. Buy this Book

The Cornish Colony, a picturesque New Hampshire settlement of artists, prospered in the decades before and after the turn of the 20th century. Among its citizens were Maxfield Parrish, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, Charles Platt, and Frederic Remington. This book, illustrated with black-and-white as well as color photographs, chronicles the gardens, gardeners, and art of this golden place and period.

Taylor's Guide to Trees. Susan A. Roth. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $23. Buy this Book

More than 200 color photographs and encyclopedic descriptions of deciduous and evergreen trees make this a thorough beginner’s guide to the most permanent plants in the home landscape. Includes general cultural practices and lists of trees for special uses and conditions.

Geraniums & Pelargoniums. John Feltwell. Firefly Books Ltd., Ontario, New York, 2001. Publisher's price, hardcover: $35. Buy this Book

Although linked by common name and plant family, the two genera profiled here make strange bedfellows. The author adeptly explains the difference between Geranium, a genus of mostly hardy perennials, and Pelargonium, the genus of scented house plants and tender bedding plants that we commonly call “geraniums.” Fully illustrated with color photographs.