Brent Horvath

I love succulents, and have grown many over the years, including sedums. Books of pictures and information on these sorts of plnts are always fun to browse. This one promised to be good, with some lovely photos, and a whole 150 plants featured. However, on actually reading it, this book was a bit disappointing. For each variety featured, only one photo at most was included, and for most of them, based on the author's descriptions, I would have wanted to see 3 shots- the whole plant, a flower close-up, and a shot of the leaves when the plant is not in flower. Seeing a bunch of nearly identical flower head close-ups didn't help me much, and would not provide enough information to readers who are using the book's information to guide them when buying plants at local gardening stores. The varieties featured in this book seemed rather limited too, lots of new hybrids and sports that may not be available at the average garden store, but very few that are natural species in cultivation. Most of the included varieties look very similar, too, at least from the included photos. And, while it is nice that the author likes the combination of sedums and grasses in plantings, but there are so many other plants available at garden stores that look nice with sedums, too. These planting aesthetics tips seemed pretty pointless, unless the reader also really likes grasses, coneflowers and sedums together.… (more)