ALL ABOUT THE PERENNIAL GARDEN

Montague Free's Gardening (Harcourt, Brace) is basic to well rounded garden libraries; his specially books All About House Plants and All About African Violets (joint publications of Doubleday and the American Garden Guild- as is this new volume) have rolled up substantial figures. And now comes this- a definitive book on perennials, lavishly illustrated with diagrams, charts, garden plans, how-to pictures, four pages and a frontis in full color and photographs. Where Marjorie Johnson's Perennials, in Rinehart's Garden Library (see report P.67) introduces the subject for the beginning gardener, concentrating on 14 favorites, Mr. Free takes 30 for full descriptive treatment, and provides extensive Appendices with listings of 500, under botanical names, under common names, lists by height, purpose, color, season of bloom. The book covers all the routine data on type of garden, site, soil, planning, planting, care, rehabilitation, propagation, and also introduces some factors not usual in books on the subject. There are excellent sections on paths and borders; on fillers for the seasonal gaps; on shrubs which can be used as part of perennial planning; and uniquely, to my knowledge, on ""orientation"" -- the habits of some flowers to face in specific directions -- this as a factor for consideration in planting. Much of his material is given emphasis for the average gardener in that he designed a perennial garden, planted it, followed the successes and failures of specific plants and- in three years converted an uneven, weedy plot into a garden. One has a sense of the practicability of the advice he garners from experience.