Books/first year garden plans

At 04:59 PM 7/15/99 -0700, you wrote:
>You might want to try "The Well-Tended Perennial Garden" by Tracy
>DiSabato-Aust, ISBN 0-88192-414-8.
>Hope you enjoy your gardening!
>Betty

This is an awesome book.  We also found Jeff Cox's "Perennial All-Stars"
and "Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials" very helpful too, in
this our (first) year of perennial gardening.  There is so much to think
about....size, color, time of bloom, die-back, etc......and also planting
conditions.  Using these three books we were able to make a
plan.....unfortunately the bunnies have "pruned" some of the taller plants
which were supposed to be at the back of the border, so the front plants
are hiding them!  We also bought some plants which could have been
mis-marked, since they are much taller than anticipated (they came from
reputable mail order houses).  My husband grew a lot of our plants under
lights and most of these have been the best performers.  Come fall we will
be re-arranging some of the plants to match their height and performance to
our original plan.  And then the fun begins while we plan for more plants
to fill those gaps and expand the garden areas!  We overlooked some really
nice plants in our original "wish list" and have to add some of those,  of
course. And a few of the ones we really liked in pictures have not turned
out to be what we expected. 

One other thing which helped greatly.  We set up an Excel spreadsheet with
all the different information in columns for each plant (color, size,
sun/shade, bloom time, etc.) and then were able to sort on the different
columns to organize our design.  It was a great help, and even when the
plants arrived, or the seedlings were ready to harden off and plant, we
could refer back to the printout without having to carry all the books
around outside.  

We have enjoyed this list and learned a lot. Thanks to you all.  

Georgia
Bob & Georgia Parker
a*@ici.net
Foxborough MA

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