Synopses & Reviews
A professional gardener's time-saving strategies for maintaining a beautiful perennial garden
You can have a spectacular perennial garden with less work than you might imagine -- an average of one hour per month per 100 square feet. The secret, according to master gardener Janet Macunovich, is organization -- prioritizing, planning, and record-keeping. Her suggestions include:
ON DESIGN: "Early summer is not the time to make design changes. Transplants and recruits cannot take hold and make much of a difference now that the season of most rapid growth is past. In addition, disturbances now can harm late-season bloomers."
ON WEEDING: "Fall weeding is probably the biggest time-saving strategy in horticulture. My records indicate the first maintenance visit in spring can be shortened by as much as 75 percent if fall work is done thoroughly."
ON DIVIDING PLANTS: "By the sixth or seventh year, most perennials need separate vacations or a soil pick-me-up. Do it before the spectacle actually becomes a worn-out memory of itself."
ON TOOLS: "A five-gallon bucket may be a gardener's greatest labor-saving device. It can serve as a bucket for soaking transplants, a bag to hold small tools or debris, and a portable stool. The only drawback is that you become over-reliant on it and annoyed when your bucket disappears."
Synopsis
Enjoy a spectacular perennial garden without spending endless hours toiling in the dirt. Janet Macunovich shares her time-saving gardening techniques that will have you growing thriving perennials while averaging just one hour of maintenance work per month for every 100 square feet of garden. Stressing the importance of prioritizing, planning ahead, and keeping accurate records, Macunovich provides a month-by-month schedule of the most essential garden tasks. With less time spent working in your garden, you'll have more time to spend admiring its beauty.
Synopsis
Macunovich teaches her month-by-month schedule for perennial gardening. Includes care charts for more than 130 perennials.
Synopsis
Macunovich teaches her month-by-month schedule for perennial gardening. Includes care charts for more than 130 perennials.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-184) and index.
About the Author
Author of several books on gardening, including Easy Landscape Design, Easy Garden Design, and the all-time favorite, Caring for Perennials, Janet Macunovich owns a landscape and design company called Perennial Favorites. A garden designer and lecturer, she also teaches classes in garden design and maintenance techniques in Michigan, where she lives and has been called "the lady with the flower house, the one with no lawn." Janet has taught at Cranbrook House and Garden Auxiliary, Detroit Garden Center, Perennial Plant Association, and Matthaei Botanical Gardens. She has been a featured presenter of such workshops as "One-Hour Month Gardening" for over 18 years, averaging 1,000 students per year. Janet's weekly gardening column appears in the Detroit News and she also shares her knowledge through radio programs in the Michigan area on a regular basis.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Year in a Garden
1 New Year's Calm: Planning the Season
2 Midwinter Restlessness: Finding Plants and Tools
3 Earliest Stirrings: Prunings
4 Opening Moves: Edging and Weeding
5 Before the Green Rush: Dividing and Mulching
6 Tending to the First Wave: Watering, Fertilizing, Planting, and Staking
7 Ushering in Summer: Controlling Pests, Watering, and More Planting
8 Establishing Summer's Routine: Deadheading, Pinching, and Managing Problems
9 Enjoying the Harvest: Playing in the Garden
10 Anticipating Fall: Transplanting and Preliminaries to Closing
11 Using Fall Wisely: Weeding to Last a Winter
12 Closing Up Before Winter: Putting the Garden to Bed
13 Winter's Onset: Reducing Maintenance and Reflecting on the Season
14 Maintenance Chart: Care of Particular Perennial Species
Appendix: References and Tools
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