Hardy Perennials and Old-Fashioned Garden Flowers (Illustrated): A corner of the author’s garden at Kirkstall

• Along with its original illustrations, this edition now includes a selection of additional photographs plants and flowers described.

Originally published in 1884, this book provides descriptions of the most desirable plants for borders, rockeries, and shrubberies, including foliage as well as flowering plants. A timeless guide for the gardener, this book includes popular flowers such as the Bluebell, Primrose, Lily, Wallflower and Crocus.

Extracts from the book:

'At the present time there is a growing desire to patronise perennial plants, more especially the many and beautiful varieties known as "old-fashioned flowers." Not only do they deserve to be cultivated on their individual merits, but for other very important reasons; they afford great variety of form, foliage, and flower, and compared with annual and tender plants, they are found to give much less trouble. If a right selection is made and properly planted, the plants may be relied upon to appear with perennial vigour and produce flowers more or less throughout the year. '

'Primula Acaulis.
Syn. P. Vulgaris, Common Primrose; Nat. Ord. Primulaceæ.
This common native flower needs no description, growing everywhere, yet we all seem to enjoy its company in our gardens, though it may, perhaps, be seen wild close by. It is a flower of more interest than ordinary, and to the florist of some importance. The great variety of double and single primroses have all sprung from this, the modest form found in our woods and damp hedgerows, and the number is being added to year by year. The generic name is in allusion to a quality—that of early or first flowering. The specific name, acaulis, is in reference to its stemlessness, which is its main distinguishing feature from the Polyanthus and Oxlip (P. veris).'