Become a gardening expert with the help of these irresistible pocket-sized plant guides! The DK Garden Guides use a unique, quick reference approach that will tell you all you need to know about successful growing.

Below you can read extracts taken from each of the books

Shrubs and Climbers

Climbing High

People with small gardens are often frightened to use tall plants, worried that they will cast too much shade and take up valuable space. If this is a concern consider climbers, which add an important vertical dimension to a garden without taking up too much room, and can be used like wallpaper to decorate fences, walls, sheds, and eyesores. Alternatively, use them to clamber up trees or through large shrubs.

Perennials

Formal gardens

Perennials look wonderful when used in wild or natural gardens, but they're equally effective in formal spaces. The hard lines of a geometric lawn or paved area are softened beautifully when edged with flowering borders filled with perennials. When creating formal borders, a simple planting plan and limited palette of colours will produce the most elegant designs. A garden filled with just white or blue plants is a classic example of a formal scheme, although even bright pinks or oranges work well when used in moderation and offset by cooler tones.

Annuals and Biennials

Using annuals and biennials

Annuals and biennials have infinite uses. A summer patio display would be incomplete without pots and hanging baskets packed with petunias, busy Lizzies and trailing lobelia. Combine these colourful basket plants with scented annuals, such as stocks, and tobacco plants, which can be planted close to the house or seating areas. Annuals and biennials are equally impressive in beds and borders where their continuous performance throughout the summer is hard to beat, and their diversity provides scope for all garden settings.

Fuchsias

Dazzling foliage

The showy flowers are reason enough to grow fuchsias, but some types match beautiful blooms with eye-catching foliage. The lime-yellow leaves of 'Genii' will brighten up a lightly shaded border as soon as they unfurl in spring, and when set against the cerise and violet flowers, the effect is magical. Others with colourful foliage include 'Tricolor', which has variegated leaves tinged with pink veining, and 'Strawberry Delight' with its pale green and bronze foliage.