Martin Quinn and Catherine Macleod. Grass Scapes: Gardening with Ornamental Grass. Ball Publishing. 2003.

Grasses are popular once more as border plants. Generally, they are easy to care for plants with enough variety in their leaf coloration, foliage texture, and size to allow you to set aside an all-grass border if you wish. Grass Scapes provides basic information on grass in chapter 1. Here you will learn all about grass roots (not all crawl everywhere), their various forms, how they are named and general information on their cultivation and maintenance requirements. The accompanying line drawings make this chapter exceptionally easy to understand even for the purely amateur gardener.

The next three chapters discuss using grass for adding color to your summer, autumn or winter gardens, using grasses in wetlands, dry conditions, or partial shade. Various ways of using grass in your garden design is discussed in detail.

Recommendation

This book is easy to use and well-illustrated. I especially appreciated the simple garden plans and beautiful photographs illustration grass in the garden. I do have one criticism about the arrangement of chapters. In my opinion, chapter 6: "Grasses at a Glance" should immediately follow chapter 4. This book's main subject is grasses so they should be described and illustrated before going on to other perennial companions to your grasses (chapter 5).