The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden

Zusatztext 87194759 Informationen zum Autor Noted plantsman and designer Roy Diblik has spent more than 30 years studying, growing, and enjoying plants. His passion for native plants and other perennials began with his work at the Natural Garden Nursery in St. Charles, Illinois, and has been cultivated through his establishment of Northwind Perennial Farm, a nursery in Burlington, Wisconsin. Roy’s recent work includes a planting of the new Oceanarium at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and a garden for the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is best known as the plantsman behind Piet Oudolf’s midwestern garden designs, including the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park in Chicago. He is a sought-after speaker and regularly addresses audiences across the country. Klappentext Looking for a lush, gorgeous, low-maintenance perennial garden? Roy Diblik’s Know Maintenance system shows you the way. Choose from 62 plans, each designed to fill a 10- by 14-foot space. Every plan tells you which plants you need and shows you where to place them. There are plans for sun and shade, and for an array of different moods and color schemes. The plans are like building blocks to arrange any way you want. Have limited space? Select a single plan or use part of one. For large spaces, simply repeat a plan or combine it with others. Best of all, the Know Maintenance system will show you how to reduce garden chores to only minutes a week. You’ll learn when to plant and water, how to weed strategically, and how to relax and enjoy the garden of your dreams.   Noted plantsman and designer Roy Diblik has spent more than 30 years studying, growing, and enjoying plants. He is the owner of Northwind Perennial Farm, a nursery in Burlington, Wisconsin, and is best known as the plantsman behind the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park in Chicago.   Introduction This book is about gardening in a new way—one that is in harmony with how plants grow and interact with each other in nature. All it requires from you, the reader, is that you come to know your plants. Once you acquire that knowledge, you will discover that you actually need to spend far less time maintaining them, because they exist in largely self-sustaining communities. I call this new way of gardening the “Know Maintenance” approach—and it can be applied to everything, not just the garden. Simply consider whether you can care for something before you add it to your daily activities. If you can’t, you wait until you’re able to. All the plants featured in the book are perennials; all have a very generous, forgiving nature and can have a good life in many parts of our country (broadly speaking, its northern half). I have used only perennials for two reasons. The first is simple: these are the plants I know and grow well. Secondly, I believe perennials provide a solid beginning, middle, and end for durable, diverse, beautiful gardens. In the next few chapters, as you become familiar with the approach, you will start to recognize how and when you can add annuals, vegetables, herbs, shrubs, trees, and containers to these perennial plant communities. But before I turn to the various aspects of my perennial garden system, we need to look at traditional gardening practices, the source of so much frustration and so many false starts and unfulfilled promises. They have given gardening an undeserved reputation for being difficult and time-consuming. Think about how these practices have evolved over the years. They were designed for specific kinds of plants and site conditions, everything from agricultural crops to bedding annuals, perennials, groundcovers, shrubs, and trees. The problem is, over the last fifty years these well-defined cultural practices have been homogenized into common tasks that are now applied indiscriminately to all types of plants and landscapes. As a re...

Product details

• Authors: Roy Diblik
• Publisher: Timber Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.03.2014
• EAN: 9781604693348
• ISBN: 978-1-60469-334-8
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 230 mm x 280 mm x 14 mm
• Subjects: Guides > Nature > Garden; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works