Tough Plants for Tough Places: How to Grow 101 Easy-Care Plants for Every Part of Your Yard

This time around, noted garden writer Loewer ( A Year of Flowers ) lends his expertise to transforming traditional problem spots into spaces flourishing with green. Loewer stubbornly--and charmingly--refuses to give up on areas that seem forbidding to plants. As usual, he is completely practical while also offering expansive, inventive, and prolific information. And, also as usual, he takes us on a tour of individual plants and gardens so personably that readers will feel as though they know these intimately. Whether the problem is heat, shade, dry soil, rocky soil or no soil (he discusses creating gardens in such places as Manhattan apartments), Loewer has a plant or a plan. He assesses 101 flowering plants, ornamental grasses, bulbs, ground covers, ferns, vines, shrubs and small trees, including detailed descriptions and care information for each. A section with 25 garden designs incorporates the listed plants in various ways. The designs are often clever and inspiring--a vertical garden that uses vines to bring flowers to areas too small for beds and borders; autumn and winter gardens for off-season months; a bog garden for very wet areas. Others, however, seem completely contrived; plans themselves can be sketchy and unfocused. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Dec.)