Glorious Shade

April 15, 2017
This approachable, well-illustrated, thorough guide to shade planting would be even more valuable to a gardening collection were its subgenre not already represented by other good titles, like Larry Hodgson's Making the Most of Shade (2005). That said, Glorious Shade is filled with excellent advice, from its seasonal to-do calendar to soil amending to overall plant selection to the numerous colorized breakout lists, which include fragrant shade plants, native plants, plants for acidic soils, and plants for neutral to alkaline soils. Nearly half of the book is a listing of plants arranged under Trees and Shrubs, Ferns, Herbaceous Perennials, and Tropicals and Annuals. Each entry, alphabetized under species name, provides the plant's generic name, its light and soil requirements, its hardiness zones, height and width at maturity, and an author's comment, often helpfully personalized from her own work with that plant. Especially recommended for collections lacking shade-gardening titles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)