Tough Plants: Unkillable Plants for Every Garden - Softcover

Sharon Amos is an author and freelance journalist specializing in gardening. Her previous books include Celebrations, Garden Wisdom, Pulbrook and Gould Flowers and Plants for Free.

Introduction

Most gardens do not have smooth, flat lawns and beds of rich, easily dug soil. We have to put up with damp, sunless corridors between houses, awkward slots, or plots shaded by trees or neighboring buildings. Equally difficult to plant are seaside gardens, which are exposed to gale-force winds and salt spray; waterlogged plots, where the drainage is poor; and dry ground, which is exposed to the merciless glare of the sun day after day, without the slightest shade. In sort, few gardens enjoy perfect conditions.

If you try to plant any of these difficult areas with a standard selection of garden-center plants the chances are that you will end up with an unsightly display of brown leaves and dried stems as the plants are defeated by the unsuitable habitat.

What you need for these sites are tough plants, which will not only shrug off all the worst conditions in your garden but actually thrive in them and grow well. Of course, these plants are not unkillable -- put drought-tolerant heather into a bog garden and it will die -- but they are practically invincible in the specific hostile conditions they have evolved to withstand.