Taylor's Guide to Shrubs

One shrub can be planted as a single ornament or several massed as accents. Shrubs work well with other groups of plants - annuals, perennials, bulbs, ground covers, and trees - to add balance and dimension to a garden. Their varied shapes enhance environments that are open or enclosed, large or small, sunny or shaded, formal or informa. Many shrubs perfume the air with delightful fragrances - lilac, honeysuckle, magnolia, gardenia, and mock-orange, to name a few. Some shrubs will even attract butterflies and birds to your yard. You can watch cedar waxwings feed on cherries or flocks of juncoes dash for the cover of a thorny pyracantha.
As a special bonus, gardening with shrubs serves practical purposes in pleasing ways. A hedge or informal border can offer privacy, screen areas from view, or serve to separate your yard from your neighbor's. Large, hardy plants make effective windbreaks and noise buffers.
Whether you are interested in creating an entirely new landscape or improving an existing one, this book will introduce you to a bounty of beautiful shrubs and tell you exactly how to grow them. Your efforts will be rewarded season after season and year after year.