101 Best Plants for the Prairies

Pleasance Crawford, a Canadian landscape and garden-history writer, is
the co-author of The Canadian Landscape and Garden History Directory and
Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing.

This book, by two Calgary freelance writers with years of
prairie-gardening experience, follows the same formula as Steve
Whysall’s 100 Best Plants for the Coastal Garden (1998) and 100 Best
Plants for the Ontario Garden (1999). Thus it presents, in alphabetical
order by species, a selection of woody and herbaceous plants that thrive
in the climatic and geographic zone given in the title.

The books’ similarities are obvious. Whysall discusses each plant
under the subheadings of “chief characteristics,” “where to plant
it,” “how to care for it,” “good companions,” and “for your
collection,” whereas Leatherbarrow and Reynolds call their comparable
categories “portrait,” “where to grow,” “how to grow,”
“perfect partners,” and “collectors’ choice.” All three books
have color photographs inserted between text pages showing a few of the
featured plants; sidebars listing each plant’s type, height, period of
bloom, and preferred habitat; appendixes grouping the plants by type;
and indexes that include botanical and common names.

These similarities notwithstanding, it’s the differences that make
Leatherbarrow and Reynolds’s work the more credible and useful. Only
they describe how they made their selections (through personal
experience and an initial survey of other prairie gardeners, followed by
further inquiries to these and other experts). Only they make these
“great plants for prairie gardens” easier to find (by listing them
in the table of contents). Only they include a short quote from a
gardener in a prairie province or neighboring state to supplement their
own enlightened comments about each featured plant.

Leatherbarrow and Reynolds’s bibliography, much more extensive than
Whysall’s, is particularly impressive for its numerous entries for
Canadian garden writers. Included are many whose articles appear in
regional periodicals such as Calgary Gardening, The Gardener for the
Prairies, Gardening in Alberta, Gardens West, and The Saskatchewan
Gardener. Even with its focus on the prairies, however, this book
contains information and insights of interest to all northern gardeners.