Adrian Bloom

Not all conifers will appear
This is a beautifully illustrated gardening book for exotic conifers. The first half of the book provided a general overview on conifers, using conifers in your garden, and the story of the conifer collection at the Mauergarten garden in Germany. The last half of the book is a directory that the author labelled as some of the best conifers for gardening. Each entry has the zone for cold and heat tolerance, growth rates, and size categories (miniature, dwarf, intermediate or slow growing and large). A list of garden and specialist supplies, bibliography, and further readings along with an index end the book. Readers will learn how flowers and cones, foliage, buds and shoots, bark and tree form visually impact the garden. Although the author includes nuggets of practicable advice throughout, the novice gardener may be overwhelm by the complexity of arrangement and lack of information on conifers common in their areas.

I was randomly chosen through a Goodreads Giveaway to receive this book free from the publisher. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (mehr)

Adrian Bloom is the son of Alan Bloom, the plantsman who started Blooms of Bressingham, the noted plant breeders and nursery. Plants are in his blood.

The book is many things: it’s a basic manual on perennial care; it tells you how to choose plants that will do well in your area (hint: choose one’s that originated in a similar climate & soil); it gives you design ideas; it lists his 12 best plants; it’s a grass/perennial encyclopedia, and it lists plants for special conditions-wet, dry, shady, etc. If you’re just beginning with perennial gardening, this might be a good book to start with, right up there with Cox’s “Perennial Garden”. If you’ve been gardening with perennials for a number of years, you might not find any surprises- I only found one new plant that I must have. But that’s not surprising: he lists only plants that have been around long enough to prove their worth. The latest salvia might be beautiful, but it might be floppsy, spew seedlings everywhere, or be a weak grower. The plants that Bloom lists are proven winners, provided you give them the soil and exposure he recommends. And that’s another thing- all the plants he lists are low maintenance.
While I like most of his plant selections (I already have most of the ones that will grow in zone 4), I’m not overly fond of his designs. They are good designs, but he uses grasses with a heavier hand than I care for, and he uses much more yellow and orange than I would. On the other hand, his gardens are designed to give multi-season interest, rather than be gorgeous for one week in June and then be spent.

Recommended.… (mehr)