A comprehensive guide to using color in the garden to best advantage.

"Color is the most potent weapon in a gardener's armory," Andrew Lawson writes. "Nothing in a garden makes more impact."

This guide takes color way beyond the existing guides for gardeners. It adds new dimensions to the art of gardening, and shows the gardener how to put plants together to make personal and effective combinations. It explores not only single-color plantings, but also the wide range of color associations available to the gardener for "painting" pictures with plants.

The Gardener's Book of Color caters to every taste and every mood. It explores soothing gardens based on varying hues of greens and restrained color palettes, and describes how harmonies and contrasts create a combination of stimulating, pleasing color. Lawson describes the importance of foliage forms, how the shapes of plants and plantings contribute to an effective garden design, and how plant choices extend to the color of their foliage, stems, bark and berries.

The color chapters feature plant directories in which Lawson recommends a variety of seasonal plants for gardening with color. His detailed notes include a brief description of the plant, its cultivation requirements, and botanical and common names.

The book finishes with 24 keyline drawings of the garden plans displayed in the book. The plans list the plants used and refer the reader to the page on which there is a photograph of that garden.

Andrew Lawson is a garden photographer with an international reputation built up over nearly 40 years. He studied science at Oxford University and painting at St Martins School of Arts but in 1985 happened upon garden photography. He is the author or illustrator, or both, of more than 70 books, and has won numerous prestigious awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Garden Media Guild. He lives in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, UK.