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Pretty Tough Plants: 135 Resilient, Water-Smart Choices for a Beautiful Garden Paperback – May 3, 2017

by Plant Select (Author)

4.7 90 ratings

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Tough-but-beautiful plant picks

There’s a growing demand for dependably hardy plants that require less maintenance and less water, but look no less beautiful in the garden. Plant Select—the leading purveyor of plants designed to thrive in difficult climates—meets this need by promoting plants that allow gardeners everywhere to have stunning, environmentally-friendly gardens that use fewer resources. Pretty Tough Plants highlights 135 of Plant Select’s top plant picks. Each profile features a color photograph and specific details about the plant’s size, best features, and bloom season, along with cultural needs, landscape features, and design ideas. The plant list includes perennials and annuals, groundcovers, grasses, shrubs, and trees. A chart at the end of the book makes it easy to choose the right plants for specific conditions and needs.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Timber Press
Publication date

May 3, 2017
Dimensions

8 x 0.5 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1604697350
ISBN-13

978-1604697353
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This gorgeous, information-packed book showcases many great plants that lead to more regionally attuned, environmentally intelligent, and uniquely lovely gardens.” —Lauren Springer Ogden, plantswoman, designer, author

“This book is like a crystal ball that reveals how we can all create gorgeous, low-water gardens.” —Panayoti Kelaidis, director of outreach at Denver Botanic Gardens

“An excellent book whose specific American context also provides clues to future British planting as our climate changes.” —Gardens Illustrated

“A labor of love by a group of passionate plant people.” —Denver Botanic Gardens

“Anyone looking for drought-tolerant, beautiful plants will appreciate this book. . . . This is a must-have book for anyone making a garden in the intermountain west and other dry areas.” —The American Gardener

“A delightful plant reference guide charts all 135 plants, and the large number of these that are deer-resistant will be of interest to many country gardeners.” —The Irish Garden

“There are plenty of resources out there that help you find these kinds of plants, but the information is scattered all over the place. That's why I was excited about Pretty Tough Plants. . . . Each plant has its own page (sometimes two), complete with stats like size, flower color and bloom season, preferred position (sun/shade), water requirements, and the kinds of pollinators it attracts. Subsections on "Culture," "Landscape Use," and "Native Range and Origins" provide a concise description of the plant.” —Succulents and More

“A lovely folio.” —The Santa Fe New Mexican

“A must-have tome for serious gardeners and those wanting to dress up their landscape but not add to the water budget.” —Times-Call

“Pretty yet powerful. . . . Make your garden thrive no matter the weather.” —Birds & Blooms

“This is a must-have tome for serious gardeners.” —The Daily Times-Call

“Has everything a gardener needs to know.” —The Oregonian

“With each page I turn it is a ‘yes,’ and another ‘YES.’ This is the guidance I need.” —The Bend Bulletin

From the Back Cover

Plant smarter!

Gardeners face a daunting array of challenges: erratic weather, limited water, and difficult cult soils, among others. Many garden plants can’t cope with these conditions. But there’s help at hand: the experts at Plant Select have tested thousands of plants to evaluate their durability and beauty, and present the top choices in this informative, lavishly illustrated guide. Whether you need a drought-tolerant tree, a long-blooming perennial that survives harsh winters, or a graceful ornamental grass that shrugs off summer heat, you’ll find it here.

About the Author

Plant Select® is a leading non-profit cultivator, distributor, and educator of plants designed to thrive in the high plains and intermountain region, and anywhere that water resources are of concern. Driven by the belief that the right plants in the right place matter and that tougher growing environments require smarter approaches, Plant Select® leverages a uniquely collaborative model and highly selective cultivation process to find, test, and distribute plants that thrive on less water and provide gardeners with smart, stunning, and successful gardens using fewer resources and with less environmental impact.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Fifty years ago, gardens across much of America looked conspicuously the same: bluegrass lawns, a foundation planting of junipers (or yews perhaps) with a fringe of annuals planted between the green monocultures. But with the birth of xeriscaping and a pride in distinctive regional landscapes, the face of the American garden began rapidly changing, and the “perennial boom” of the early 1980s has morphed into a “perennial celebration” for many gardeners, further transforming landscapes and gardens across the country. In the Rocky Mountain west, Plant Select spearheaded the movement in the 1990s by providing a rich palette of native and adapted trees, shrubs, perennials, and even a few annuals which thrive in the changeable climate locals enjoy and sometimes complain about.

WHAT IS PLANT SELECT?
Plant Select is the country’s leading brand of plants designed to thrive in high plains and intermountain regions, offering plants that provide more beauty with less work so gardeners of all levels can achieve smart, stunning, and successful gardens using fewer resources and with a more positive environmental impact.

Driven by the belief that the right plants in the right place matter and that cultivating plants in tougher growing environments requires smarter approaches, Plant Select leverages a uniquely collaborative model and highly selective cultivation process to find, test, and distribute plants that thrive on less water.

Plant Select’s goal is to create smart plant choices for a new American landscape inspired by the Rocky Mountain region.

UNDERSTANDING THE NATURAL LANDSCAPE AND PLANT ORIGINS
The region Plant Select focuses on is truly a steppe (pronounced step)—a semiarid region dominated by flowering plants, grasses, and grasslike species and characterized by extremes of cold and heat. Around the globe, steppes occupy large geographic areas on four continents. It’s been said the steppe has only two seasons: summer and winter—except that these tend to leapfrog through the garden year, never taking a fully linear path. Summer temperatures stretch from March to October punctuated by untimely frosts, hail, and snowstorms. Winters can have long summery stretches of shirtsleeve weather coaxing plants into precocious growth just in time for arctic blasts. Is it any wonder that many traditional garden plants (selected and developed for maritime climates like the Netherlands, England, or the Eastern seaboard or Oregon in the United States) fail to thrive here?

Plant Select looks beyond the more traditional American landscape plant offerings and instead seeks out plants from the semiarid, harsh climates in the western United States (such as penstemons and agastaches) and the Southern Hemisphere (delospermas and osteospermums) that grow naturally in more extreme climates and that are adapted to soils of higher pH and long periods of water scarcity. A large proportion of Plant Select adoptions come from Eurasia: the high mountains surrounding the Mediterranean (home to Digitalis species) and especially from the steppes of Asia proper—the closest correlative to the Rocky Mountain region in climate.

Three features of the steppe environment have an enormous impact on plant options. First and foremost is the soil. Plants growing in steppe climates have a high tolerance for the pedocal soils characteristic of semiarid regions. These soils are rich in mineral content (clay or sand with low humus content) and high in nutrients. Properly managed, pedocals develop a porous, more highly aerated structure in winter due to the freeze-thaw action of frost. If watered sparingly, these soils retain a high level of fertility that is often leached in wetter climates.

The opposite soil type, pedalfer, is characteristic of regions of high rainfall; it’s often intensely acidic in pH and much lower in a wide spectrum of nutrients. Plant Select plants are selected for their preference to pedocals over pedalfers. These are plants that grow well here—not in the soils across the continent. The second characteristic of the steppe environment is intense sunlight. Plant Select choices, often evergreen or ever-silver, better tolerate high levels of light than the many plants native to the interior United States. This year-round presence allows for continuous photosynthesis by the plants during the winter months when there is strong solar radiation. In the west, this same sunshine can burn many plants from maritime climates which may need deep shade to grow here.

Many native western wildflowers, as well as many Plant Select varieties, have small, hairy leaves or leaves covered with a layer of wax to protect them from strong sunlight. Because so many of these plants are evergreen, however, a garden using them can have a powerful beauty in all seasons.

The last issue is water. Many Plant Select plants come from regions with less than 10 inches of annual precipitation (for example, fernbush, Apache plume, and Mojave sage). These plants often grow best in gardens with little or no supplemental irrigation, but any plant on the Plant Select roster is apt to thrive with far less water than is usually used in regional gardens. Gardeners who make an effort to conserve water are thrilled with Plant Select for providing an ever-expanding portfolio of tough, water-thrifty plants to turn to.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Timber Press (May 3, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1604697350
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1604697353
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.58 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 0.5 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #270,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #20 in Desert Climate Gardening
- #228 in Gardening & Horticulture Reference (Books)
- #286 in Gardening Encyclopedias

Customer Reviews:
4.7 90 ratings

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Northern Grama

Excellent book!

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2023

Verified Purchase

If you are interested in planting species that need very little water, this book is for you. Beautiful photographs and descriptions of every plant variety in the book. Along with their planting zones and soil and sun preferences. Plant Select is an excellent program and I highly recommend this book!

Helpful

Betty Cahill

More than FIVE Stars!

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2017

Verified Purchase

Many gardeners, especially ones in the Denver and Rocky Mountain Region have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Pretty Tough Plants by the experts at Plant Select. The wait is over and the book is more than exceptional. It is a well-written, garden friendly handbook on must have perennials, trees, shrubs, groundcovers, a handful of annuals and smaller “petite” plants for small to any size garden. The basic who/what/where is easy to follow—size, type of flowers, season of flower and best features. I especially like the plant photos, plus the growing culture information and the best places or landscape styles the plants will perform. The plant reference guide (which includes deer resistance and pollinator friendly) in the back of the book is a very helpful recource. It’s the perfect size to read or admire on a coffee table. Thank you Plant Select for these wonderful plants and an outstanding book!

5 people found this helpful

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T. Stockman

Book is a promo for premium varieties

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

I'm usually a DIY'er, so thought I'd get write-ups on plants either native, or non-native but very appropriate plant for fitting into Colorado native landscaping. That expectation was close! But instead, these are nice write-ups on premium (and expensive) cultivated varieties of those native or appropriate non-native plants. Most of them bigger & showier than their more normal cousins from the wild.

Pros: Absolutely stunning premium book, beautiful photos & layout, very good info on the featured varieties.

Cons: It's like viewing infomercials on TV - it's informative promotional material on premium brand varieties, not a guide to the generic plant species.

So IMO not a good bang-for-the-buck resource for someone doing more generic Colorado landscaping.

2 people found this helpful

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gardengirl

A must-have for homeowners in the Intermountain West

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

My day job is teaching homeowners how to landscape for the arid Intermountain West. Pretty Tough Plants offers up a wide range of plant choices which are less commonly used in this area than they should be. Many of the plants in the book are found in my own yard as well as the conservation-based garden where I work. I would recommend this book for homeowners who are tired of babying plants that don't quite fit our environment. The plants shared are tried and tested in numerous gardens here in the west and help ensure landscape success for homeowners.

A copy of this book was donated to the library for our botanical garden but I liked it well enough to purchase my own copy as well.

11 people found this helpful

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Beulah Flauto

Great book for growing water wise and native plants

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2017

Verified Purchase

I am always trying to find plants that I can grow in my altitude of almost 6500 ft. This book was a great help with finding them and also finding the deer resistant ones - which actually tend to be native varieties. It is very helpful with suggesting the waterwise plants, too.
I think the book is a great help for novice and expert gardener. I have lots of questions about plants and which ones are the best suited for me. I assume that other folks are like me and are just very interested in this subject.
The photos of the plants are beautiful.

4 people found this helpful

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Katherine B.

Great resource!

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is thorough, easy to use and well laid out. It was very helpful in selecting plants for a new landscape in Denver. I felt confident including plants with the Plant Select designation.

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Wendy Sue

Great Book for High Altitude Xeriscape Plants

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2020

Verified Purchase

As a Master Gardener, I needed this book to help with tried & true plants for the high-altitudes of Colorado. I have several of the listed plants in my gardens and enjoy them immensely. If you live at high-altitude, over 5,000 ft. and enjoy gardening, this book is a must have.

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Frosty

If you are a Colorado gardener, it might be useful. Does not seem to apply to the east, midwest or pacific northwest areas

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2017

How useful this book is will depend entirely on where you live! Do not be deceived by the hardiness zones listed.

Many things listed in this book as hardy, are not hardy in NJ, Ohio or Indiana. There are several reasons the plants listed here are NOT hardy in states outside Colorado.
1. Snow cover. In the midwest and eastern states, we might have snow cover for several weeks but more likely we have almost none. So the plants are subjected to constant changes in temperature and drying winds. They also experience frost heave.
2. Humidity makes a huge difference in the ability to survive heat. Things that thrive in dry heat out west, melt in other states.
3. Drainage. If you have a sandy, rapid draining soil, sure, all sorts of penstemons will grow. Try that with clay soil in the midwest and you won't think penstemons are perennial.
4. Some of these plants says "cool weather plant". They will be like pansies here, short bloom and then vanish as things heat up.

From the standpoint of one who has gardened in the eastern part of the US and the Midwest, this is not a very useful book.

10 people found this helpful

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Ruth Rodgers

Fantastic collection for dry gardens

Reviewed in Canada on August 29, 2019

Verified Purchase

Wonderful unusual yet dependable plants for the hot dry gardens that more of us are coping with these days. Great plants for low irrigation and maintenance gardens. Now, where to find all of them in British Columbia?

Michael Smith

Not for me!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

Well written but aimed at American reader.

One person found this helpful

Teresa Roper

Not bad

Reviewed in Canada on June 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

Not a bad book, but definitely not TOUGH plants. Most plants are not hardy below zone 4b. And many not below zone 5.
As a zone 3 gardener, there wasn’t much.

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Pretty Tough Plants: 135 Resilient, Water-Smart Choices for a Beautiful Garden Paperback – May 3, 2017

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