Just a few decades ago, gardeners and landscapers could choose from good old pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) and perhaps a dozen other ornamental grasses; today's lucky gardeners can design with hundreds of exciting grasses in a multitude of shapes, sizes, textures, and colors. The Color Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses (another outstanding contribution from the folks at Timber Press) is intended for gardeners, nursery professionals, and landscape designers in all climates. This exquisite work of art and science begins with a lavishly illustrated chapter on the beauty of perennial ornamental grasses in the landscape; then follows with chapters on the botanical classification and naming of grasses and their relatives; anatomy and terminology of grasses; native habitats of grasses; landscape designing with grasses; growing, maintaining and propagating grasses; and finally a 170 page encyclopedia of more than 400 ornamental grasses, sedges, rushes, restios, cat-tails and bamboos. Each species is described in a paragraph or two of authoritative text and presented with clear yet artistic photographs of the plant in the landscape. The more than 500 photographs were selected from the author's collection of nearly 15,000! There is a glossary, a bibliography, a listing of nurseries that sell ornamental grasses, and a common names cross-index. If you have only one book on ornamental grasses, this is the one to have.
