Eastern Shore Gardener

My friend, Nancy Ondra, has a great new book, Tried and True Perennials, and I wanted to make a quick pre-Christmas post about it. It may be a perfect gift for someone on your list.  (I got it for myself!)

Anyway, if I’m completely on board with any plant that Nancy recommends, and this book features 20 of the best performers from her garden. I grow a number of them already, although undoubtedly not as well as she does, and the rest just jumped to the top of my list of plants to add to the garden. I should mention that Nancy gardens near Quakertown, Pennsylvania, so her recommendations are all suitable for our region.

This isn’t just a plant-list book, though. Nancy is a real gardener, and she has a wonderful way of communicating exactly why a plant makes a wonderful addition to a garden. Entries list each plant’s cultural needs, discusses the plant’s features and drawbacks, and provides ideas for using it in the garden, including suggested  companion plants.

Best of all, the book features loads of Nancy’s photographs of her garden. If you’ve visited her blog at www.hayefield.com, you know what to expect here. Tried and True Perennials features loads of photographs of the featured plants as she has used them in her garden.

Getting a Copy

Tried and True Perennials is self-published, and it is available as a traditional print book for $19.99 or as an electronic book for $9.00. Go to  http://hayefield.com/tried-and-true-perennials/ for more information to order either format. The electronic version is on sale for $6.00 through December.

I downloaded the electronic version, which is in a PDF file. It’s large, 40 MB, so you do need a fairly good internet connection to download.  A WiFi connection works great. (Don’t make the mistake I did the first time: Make sure you click that you want to save the file at the start of the download! Otherwise, it disappears when you turn off your computer.)

The PDF version works great. The photos show up really well on both my computer and my iPad. Nancy has included links from each plant name on the table of contents to the corresponding entry, so you can get around the book quickly. Plus there is a link on each page to the Table of Contents or the index. I should mention that I have the book on my iPad via an app called GoodReader.

So, Tried and True Perennials will add a few plants to everyone’s “must have” list. Many of them are native species, and all will make great additions to Eastern Shore Gardens