The Gardener's Colour Palette: Paint Your Garden with 100 Extraordinary Flower Choices - Tapa blanda

The sensuous delight of colour is one of the greatest pleasures that gardening offers. In this compact, accessible volume, Tom Fischer profiles 100 top-performing flowering plants (including perennials, bulbs and flowering shrubs) in ten different colour categories, concentrating on those that are both widely growable in a variety of climates and that are the most striking representatives of their colour group. Included are familiar favourites such as tulips and poppies as well as less common flowers such as fritillaries, corydalis and species lilies. Each entry provides a general description of the plant, including common and botanical names; height and spread; bloom time; hardiness; and, light and water requirements. Fischer also discusses what is distinctive about each plant and recommends companion plants for the garden. This information, paired with Clive Nichols' stunning photographs, makes "The Gardener's Colour Palette" an invaluable source of both practical advice and inspiration.

Tom Fischer is editor-in-chief at Timber Press in Portland, Oregon. He got his start in book publishing at the University of Chicago Press and Beacon Press, and spent 14 years on the editorial staff at Horticulture magazine in Boston. His Boston garden featured a hardscape created by Douglas Reed, of Reed Hilderbrand Associates, and contained noteworthy collections of unusual flowering shrubs, shade perennials, and delphiniums. After moving to Portland in 2004, he began a new drought-tolerant garden composed of plants from the world's five Mediterranean climate areas, with an emphasis on West Coast natives. His most recent project has been a collaboration with Portland designer Lauren Hall-Behrens to create a lush, exotic garden featuring ornamental grasses, palms, ferns, salvias, Pacific Coast irises, and Southern Hemisphere plants.