The Year Round Garden by Geoff Stebbings is primarily a plant reference book. The lion share of the book is taken with providing plant profiles, which are especially helpful for spontaneous buyers of plants on sale in the nursery (I qualify).
Invariably, as a gardener, you decide to buy something and then find you must research how to situate it and best care for it. This book is an easy guide for that information, with color coded pages that can be thumbed from the closed covers. Another great feature is the inclusion of a couple good planting companions to the featured plant choice.
The drawback of this book, for a gardener located in mid-continental USA, is the same as found in many such books: many of the plants are not hardy for this area, and much of the information (like “winter” bloom and evergreen properties) are not applicable here. That is the type of self-editing that we gardeners are used to in this part of the country, since most books are written with milder climates in mind.
The plants are categorized first by season, secondarily by type (herbaceous, bulbs,etc). There is a short, but inspiring back chapter on planting combinations and a quick table guide of plant profiles. I always found that last sort of data the least helpful, but that is just my quirk.
The book is most helpful for Southern gardeners or those on the coasts, I believe, because of the number of plants that won’t take American harsh winters.
The photos are wonderful, and you might want this book just on that account.
