The Gossler Guide to the Best Hardy Shrubs

I have long enjoyed the folksy but information packed annual catalogs from Gossler Farms Nursery in Springfield, Oregon. It is a great pleasure to now have the first book by the family (mom Marjory and sons Roger and Eric Gossler), The Gossler Guide to the Best Hardy Shrubs. Here the very practical, learned-by-experience descriptions of the catalog are expanded to 350 of their favorites, and all would make a good choice for local gardens.

The highlight of the introductory chapters is “How Not to Kill Your Plants” with lots of advice on how to select, buy, plant, and nurture your new shrubby children. “Consider it an open adoption: you want to know about the birth parents, what neighborhood the plant came from, whether drugs were involved, and so on.” This same professional insiders advice continues in the A-Z listings, where I learned that a favorite of mine, Enkianthus perulatus, is rarely found in nurseries “…because it grows too slowly to be profitable.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2010 Arboretum Bulletin.