Annuals for Every Purpose: Choose the Right Plants for Your Conditions, Your Garden, and Your Taste

by Larry Hodgson

Hot on the heels of the best-selling Perennials for Every Purpose, this new book has the same goal in mind-- to make growing annuals easier by presenting them in the way you use them in the garden. Whether you have a shady site or a cool climate or you want terrific annuals for beds or containers, you'll find more than 400 plants listed by their special feature rather than in plain alphabetical order. That's the "purpose" in the book's title, and it makes your job of choosing annuals effortless!

Genres: Gardening

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Soula · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes a large variety of plants, but still seemed to miss some really popular ones, at least popular ones to the East Coast? 🤷‍♀️

I found that the organization of sections and what was included in said sections was a bit unnatural to me - a number of plants fell into multiple sections and so it caused a lot of bouncing back and forth between sections. And while the referred plants always included their page number for reference, the list of referenced plants were alphabetical rather than chronological by page number - not necessarily a huge deal, but it definitely got annoying since I wasn't familiar with the biological species name for most of the plants so I *had* to flip around to see which ones were being referred.

I further did not find the general species information to be scan friendly. While each plant had a consistently laid out general information section that included sun, water, etc., it was not in symbol or short hand or formated separately to make for a quick glance to recognize and catalog that pertinent information. This was frustrating because I had to read entire paragraphs to see how large the plant gets or what temperature/sun exposure they prefer. This is not ideal when wanting a guide *and* reference book for gardening.

Further, at the end of each section, other plants were mentioned as "bonus plants" that fit the section, but only 1 or 2 pictures were included out of the 10 or so mentioned - I would much prefer all the plants pictured there for my convenience.

BUT, this book provided relevant information that I hadn't come across while Google searching a number of annual plants I'm interested in, so that's a win! I know it sounds like I have a lot of complaints, but this book really did have good information. It just would have desperately benefitted from being formated a bit differently; maybe categorize the sections differently so there wasn't so much over lap and using symbols and/or clearly sectioning the general information for each plant. Realistically, I will need to go back through the book and highlight the relevant information so it stands out upon scanning. I will keep this book and I genuinely don't feel the need to find a different annual gardening book, I just need to annotate it a bit so it's at it's most useful in the moment.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish there were more of the fun facts because those were probably my favorite part about the book. Lots of information in the book when you think about just how many plants are included.
I didn't appreciate the lack of acknowledgement for some of these species being extremely invasive though. I wouldn't recommend this book to a gardener who can't differentiate what plants they should avoid in this book if they want to be environmentally conscious.
Additionally, I personally would have preferred it be sorted differently. Like all of the annuals in alphabetical order and then the lists of the plants for each purpose with page numbers for reference.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annuals for Every Purpose: Choose the Right Plants for Your Conditions, Your Garden, and Your Taste by Larry Hodgson (Rodale Books 2002) (635.9312). I can't describe how excited I was to learn that Larry Hodgson had written Annuals For Every Purpose, because his volume Perennials For Every Purpose is one of my most favorite gardening books. It stands to reason that a volume on annuals would be much more limited by the subject matter, and this proved to be true. Nevertheless, Annuals For Every Purpose will be one of my "go to" books on the subject. My rating: 7/10, finished 4/30/11.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know annuals as well as I should and this is a great way to start. I have lots of other books on or including annuals, but this is the most enjoyable - it has good picts, is organized by the plants' needs, and includes lots of useful tidbits.

[Lillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is the best annuals book I've come across...

[Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent ! Très pratique et rempli d'informations pertinentes, agréable à lire grâce à l'humour et la concision de l'auteur, couvre plus de 200 annuelles.