Garden Plants and Flowers: A-Z Guide to the Best Plants for your Garden

Pleasance Crawford is the co-author of The Canadian Landscape and Garden
History Directory and Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden
Writing.

Lorraine Johnson, who has written eight gardening books including
several on growing native plants, provides a short introduction urging
Canadian gardeners to “dig in” and assuring them that the book is
“tailored to [their] needs.”

The “A–Z of Garden Plants” takes up the first 350 pages of the
book. In this section trees and shrubs, then climbing plants, then
flowering herbaceous plants (annuals, biennials, perennials, and bulbs),
then bamboos and grasses, and finally ferns all make an appearance. And
all receive the same treatment: a few pages on cultivation and use in
the garden followed by the plants themselves, presented in alphabetical
order. Each “best” genus, species, or cultivar gets a colour photo,
a description, and some words on its specific needs. Certain especially
ornamental genera get “feature” treatment. The coverage ends with 33
pages on “Caring for Plants,” five pages of lists of “Plant
Selections” for various situations, and a 15-page index.

The book’s strength is that it includes choice plants only recently
available at Canadian garden centres. Its weakness is that it tries to
be all things to all gardeners. The overriding A–Z arrangement makes
for some strange bedfellows. As a mild example, a cyclamen hardy in zone
5 (southern Ontario and east and west coastal areas) is followed by a
cardoon hardy only in zone 7b (small areas of B.C.).

Beginning gardeners or those in the colder parts of the
country—unless they are also garden tourists—might find this book
both frustrating and impractical.