Mid-August meltdown
It’s mid-August. Do you find yourself apologizing for your perennials right about now? Stems that can’t hold their flowers up? Foliage that’s become tattered and sad? Plants that have outgrown their space and are crowding their neighbors?
Third time’s the charm
All of these problems have clear solutions in the new third edition of Tracy DiSabato-Aust’s bestselling book, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: The Essential Guide to Planting and Pruning Techniques, from Timber Press.
Because I helped out on this book with some editorial work and photos, this will be an unabashedly biased review of it. And because I received an extra copy of the book from Timber in conjunction with that work, I’ll be giving one away at the end of this post!
Snippity snip
Pruning perennials.
Nobody gave the idea much ink (other than in reference to mums) until the first edition of The Well-Tended Perennial Garden in 1998. But Tracy was, and is, a perennial-pruning evangelist. She spelled out the many reasons why pruning shouldn’t be reserved for our woody plants.
In the new edition, she gives 15 functions (fifteen!) that pruning can serve in the perennial garden.
Proper pruning—Tracy shows you exactly how to do it—can prevent problems like those in the opening paragraph: floppy stems, ragged summer foliage, and plants that get a little too big.
For example, here’s a native lupine I grew from seed. It was glorious this spring. I wanted to collect seed, so I let it go to seed, and afterwards it looked horrible. Huge, messy, and horrible. I cut it back to the ground in early summer.
Today, despite no rain in almost two months and practically no love from me, it has a sweet, fresh mound of basal foliage.
This is an agastache I got from Xera Plants called ‘Mandarin Dream’. It usually gets too tall for its pot and looks out of proportion, but this year I pruned it back in the spring, so it wouldn’t get so tall. I also didn’t fertilize it, which is why it’s so pale, but you get the idea.
I have lots of butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). Pruning in this case can help to encourage rebloom. I sheared this patch as soon as the blooms faded, and now it has buds again.
Whereas this patch of butterfly weed I left alone, and now it’s covered in seedpods. No flower buds.
Everything you need to know
The new Well-Tended also discusses staking, dividing, watering, and fertilizing perennials. You’ll learn how to control and prevent pests and diseases without harsh chemicals. And Tracy shares her steps in creating beds and borders from start to finish. Good, meaty stuff.
Then there is the updated plant encyclopedia, with more than fifty new entries. Each item has detailed info about its maintenance—the kind of info that you don’t find elsewhere.
But wait, there’s more! Lists of perennials according to their maintenance needs: plants that need dividing only every ten years or more, clay busters, lower-maintenance perennials…
Win a copy now
That’s right! I have one free copy of the 2017 edition of The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust to give away to a lucky reader. Just let me know in the comments below that you’d like to enter, and I’ll choose a winner at random on Sunday, August 20, at 5:00 pm Pacific Time. Good luck!
And the winner, courtesy of random.org, is… Mary Hayden! Congratulations Mary, and thank you to everyone for participating and for reading my blog.
I need this book!
I need this book! Pick ME!!
This will be like all of those reality competition shows where they interview one of the contestants:”I want this book more than ANYONE else in the known and unknown universe in all dimensions of all universes. Trust me, no one wants this book more than me!”. How’s that for unabashedly putting it out there? 🙂
Well all right then!
This is the book I’ve been looking for. Please please pick me
My garden desperately needs me to win this book. Pick meeeee!!!!
Would love to learn more through this book! Fingers crossed!
Hi Amy, I’d like to enter for the book giveaway. The photos look lovely and what sharp editing! Also, you are wildly attractive. 🙂
Go ON… 😉
Hi, Amy, Please put me on the list of entries for the book. Thank you.
Sounds like the perfect book! Would love to have it as well!
Hmmm… there seems to be quite a demand for this book. Here’s to great sales! Please put my name in the pot!
This book looks like a great piece of knowledge most gardeners could use and
I would love to win it.
Looks like this book is a gardeners new best friend and I would love to have a new gardening buddy! Congratulations to whomever receives this book.
I would love to win this book!
We will even pay to have your book. Love, Mary C and Dick C.
You will get a free copy when my book comes out, Mom! This is another book I just helped out on.
I would love a copy of this book to help with the new landscaping I will be putting around my new house!
Amy–Congrats! How great that you’re involved with this new edition. I have the first one, and absolutely need the update! LOL to your reader comments competing for your favor. Luckily (because I cannot top them!) your pick will be random 😀
In years past I have cut back my tall phlox and late-summer blooming asters. I didn’t do it this year and REALLY regret it now. I’m seeing a lot of other perennials that could also benefit from a late-spring haircut. I really need to take notes now for a more manageable garden next summer.
You don’t need to enter me in the contest. I already know everything… Kidding of course. I can get the book myself and write a review.
Please enter me! Thanks!
Yep, looks like something I should add to my library! Thanks for the chance to win.
I think I lost my previous copy in the move or gave it away so I could use it!
I’m actually kind of sort of related to the multi-talented Tracy, and I would love to win her book! Her sweet hubby and my sweet hubby are cousins.
Believe I first heard of this book in February at the N. W. Flower and Garden Show
in Seattle during a seminar. Thought then I should have bought it, and now it crosses my path again. Thank you for the reminder. It is appreciated.
Linda
Tracy, you ROCK! Over the past 20 years I have introduced your book to so many newbie gardeners and said, ‘follow her directions’. I have always loved your lectures at the CENTS show and wish you all the well earned success this new edition will bring. All the Best!
I would like to be entered for the free book giveaway. Please and thank you.
My dear friend Tracy wrote the Foreword for my recently recently released book, “Cool Plants for Cold Climates: A Garden Designer’s Perspective”. (University of Alaska Press, 2017)
Having read the earlier edition of her “Well-Tended Perennial Garden” as well as her “Well-Designed Mixed Border” years ago, I am a long term fan. Would love to complete the trilogy and read the new edition of “Well Tended” this winter!
Please put my name in the basket. Thanks.
Hi Amy: Ever since I met you when on a walk a few years back — we ended up talking for quite a bit of time — I interrupted your time that day as you were doing some photo work in random neighborhoods you told me. I learned a little about your interest in the plant world and since have realized the depth of it and how involved you are. I was able to keep your name/blog info in my mind that day on my walk home and looked up your site and signed up to receive your blogs. Have been enjoying them alot ever since whenever they arrive in my email. Thank you. The location when we met was on NE Alameda and about 20 something St. – for get the exact street number now. I remember enjoying our visiting.
I would love to receive this book to learn more about growing and pruning perennials as I want to have more of them in my yard than I have now.
Count me in! Linda Coombs calls it the Chelsea Chop and when I think to do it the plants thank me and my garden looks ever so much better. This book might be just the push I need to be more diligent.
I’d love that book!
Thanks for your blog! I definitely learned something today. One of my favorite plants in my garden is the asclepias, especially because of all the bees feeding on the blossoms. Sadly, it looks like the second photo. I’ll be sure to prune it next year for more blooms and more bees!
I would love to be entered into your book raffle!
Just got serious about my perennial garden this year, and this book would be super useful to my edumacation. ?
I’d like to enter. I am a gardener by trade. Love to keep collecting reference material. Never stop learning and looking at pictures and reading new books. Thank you so much for giving a book away.
I Would love a copy- I’m trying to read everything I can get my hands on before I start digging. This sounds like a staple for any gardener’s collection! Thanks!
What a great addition this would be to my gardening books collection!
I’m probably ineligible being in the UK – but you never know. The book looks very useful.
This book would help us plant a perennial garden at our new home in southern VA. The weather here is quite different from that in northern Pennsylvania and we could use any suggestions to get us started.
Sounds like just the book every gardner needs to have! Good luck
This book looks so interesting to read, I have a passion for gardening, this is gonna be perfect for me.
I love this book, It will help a lot for sure. Can’t wait to watch this.
I would love to be the new owner of this book! It gives one encouragement and new excitement to see what works!