"Gardeners who live in the interior West - an area that encompasses Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico - and the Great Plains, from Alberta and Saskatchewan south, face a particularly daunting challenge: a harsh, semi-arid climate that features both scorching summers and brutally cold winters. These extremes rule out many standard garden plants that thrive in areas with greater rainfall and more moderate temperatures. Yet there is a wide variety of native plants that are not only beautiful but provide highly satisfactory choices for the western garden. In this comprehensive volume, longtime gardener Robert Nold describes the best picks among perennials and annuals; grasses; bulbs; rock garden plants; cacti; yuccas and other similar plants; shrubs; and trees-more than a thousand plants in all. Leavened with humor and rueful wisdom, Nold's pithy descriptions zero in on each plant's outstanding ornamental characteristics while giving the reader an accurate idea of what to expect from the plant's performance in the garden." "Although Nold addresses himself primarily to western gardeners, anyone with an interest in hardy, drought-tolerant plants will find in these pages an abundance of tempting possibilities with which to experiment."--BOOK JACKET.
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