Jenny Rose Carey is just the woman to write the Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide. She is a hands-on gardener but she has worked for long periods at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Meadowbrook Farm, lectured, and more. Now she has brought us a new book that is amazingly helpful for every gardener. Certainly for me.

I am not in my first youth so I welcome the introductory information given in the first pages: Your Garden of Flowers with a look at shape, role, presence and color, and then followed by the Flower Gardener’s Calendar with a look at the types of flowers in bloom during the year. The Flower Gardener’s Palette is the largest part of the book because it presents flowers from Achillea to Zinnia. This section is absolutely vital to me.

The Garden Palette pages  include the size, shape and color of the flowers  with advice on where in the garden the flowers can be used. For example, peonies all have similar shapes, although with more or fewer of the petals and different colors. Information is also given about their bloom time, late spring and early  summer. In addition  there is information about the size of the plant and the zones. Peonies will be 24-36 inches in height and a  similar size in the full grown plant.  Finally, there is  the zone, 3-8 . Three means the zone is very cold 40 (in my book) degrees. Then it gets warmer and warmer, zones 4-5-6-7-and 8, and peonies will do well in those zones.  The peony page continues to  give information about planting  and caring for the peony, which may live on for half a century

One reason I like all those photos is because they help me make distinctions between so many flowers that are similar to each other.  For instance, a substantial number of  yellow flowers from leucojum, helenium, coreopsis, helianthus, and echinacea look like daisies. Of course, everyone knows that chrysanthemums can look like daisies. This chapter can help you find the right ‘daisy’ you want. For myself I have to admit that I can get lost in those similar daisy-like flowers. These pages help me find all the flowers I want to plant.

After naming and learning about all these flowers we are on to the types of gardens we might prefer. There are informal gardens. which is certainly the way I go about gardening, but there are gardeners who prefer beautiful formal gardens – and I love visiting those gardens. Even so, that is not my style.

In fact gardeners will find many styles of garden to create. This book suggests how to approach some of the styles from cottage gardens, gardening in the damp, or in very dry spaces. Right now many gardeners, like me are working to add lots of flowers to encourage the presence of pollinators. It is amazing the number of pollinators that will be welcome to the garden. Bees, of all types, are important, of course, but butterflies, hummingbirds, wasps, beetles,  and moths of different varieties are also important. It is essential to choose native plants to feed those creatures.

Putting Your Flower Garden Together gives you all the information you will need to prepare, plan, finally plant, and maintain the plants in your garden. This final section of The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide will again provide the information you need.

I cannot thank Jenny Rose Carey enough for writing and putting this beautiful book together.  Do you have questions? This book will provide answers.