As an alternative to most planting schemes the book champions floriferous bedding plants for their bright colours and ease of cultivation.
This book will strike a chord with the many gardeners who feel that contemporary gardens are now dominated by a planting style and a plant palette that has become, as Andy Vernon puts it, ‘predictable, just a little too polite’. As an antidote, Vernon champions bedding plants that in the main are neglected, despised even, by many gardeners and designers, and which form what the book refers to as ‘flower-powered seasonal displays’.
The book celebrates these plants as ‘generous, easyto-find, easy-to-grow and easy-to-please’. Vernon praises begonias, petunias, verbenas and the hundreds of other, mainly annual, plants for their floriferous qualities and their riotous colours.
Inspired by memories of his grandfather’s colourful bedding plants and the glorious displays in local parks, Vernon suggests a dozen or so planting themes, mainly based around colour schemes, each with several pages of a sort of swatch card of plants and colours. His names for them, such as candy floss and sherbet spring, give an indication of the bold colours that appeal to him. Though lovers of pastel colours will also find ideas, and all are set out as recommendations rather than recipes, serving as springboards for the reader’s imagination.
The book is to be read as an encouragement to gardeners to follow their instincts and plant whatever they want, not what is fashionable. I liked this book as much for the planting suggestions as for the breath of fresh air it blows over the discreet, well-mannered planting schemes of most modern gardens. Vernon’s previous book helped rekindle our appreciation of dahlias. I hope that this one encourages more of us to shrug off our inhibitions and create more ‘flower-powered gardens’.