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Availability:
Only 4 left in stock, order soon!
Arrives
Saturday, Nov 7
At a glance
- Condition
- New
- Dimensions
- 9 x 0.55 x 11 in
- Weight
- 2.31 lb
- Publisher
- Timber Press
- Publication date
- March 11, 2014
- Language
- English
- Print length
- 216 pages
Description
“A veritable goldmine for gardeners.” —Plant Talk We’ve all seen gorgeous perennial gardens packed with color, texture, and multi-season interest. Designed by a professional and maintained by a crew, they are aspirational bits of beauty too difficult to attempt at home. Or are they? The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden makes a design-magazine-worthy garden achievable at home. The new, simplified approach is made up of hardy, beautiful plants grown on a 10x14 foot grid. Each of the 62 garden plans combines complementary plants that thrive together and grow as a community. They are designed to make maintenance a snap. The garden plans can be followed explicitly or adjusted to meet individual needs, unlocking rich perennial landscape designs for individualization and creativity. Read more
Specs 8
| Publisher | Timber Press |
|---|---|
| Publication date | March 11, 2014 |
| Language | English |
| Print length | 216 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1604693347 |
| ISBN-13 | 48 |
| Item Weight | 2.31 pounds |
| Dimensions | 9 x 0.55 x 11 inches |
No specs match.
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Top Amazon Reviews
A wonderful garden WORKbook!
Format: Paperback
Rarely has a garden book inspired me to actually make grand changes to my gardens. This book inspired me and gave me the tools needed to make the changes. There are already many excellent reviews here. I think most of the reviews for positive and negative aspects of this book are very fair, and true. This is not a "gardening 101 for idiots" book. You do have to read the book, and study the plans and the pictures. Sometimes you have to go back and forth in the book to find an answer to your immediate question. However, I find Diblik to be a true teacher and if you do "work" with his book, you will come away with the ability to make your own plan that fits into your own garden. One of the reasons that I give this book 5 starts is because it IS a new way of creating a bed, it IS ground-breaking and different than the million garden books we have on our shelves already from the last 50 years. If you think of this as WORKbook for helping you design a bed, I think you'll be very satisfied with this book. You don't have to cookie-cut his plans. I was able to use his ideas and meld them into my existing beds that are not open fields a la Diblik and a la Oudolf. Much of my yard is already established with shrubs/trees/perennials that I do not want to move. If you study his many garden plans (that have no pics), you start to see patterns in how he does his plantings. There are MANY photos in this book, plenty of them will give you the knowledge you need to imagine how these plans might look. He's showing you HOW makes the plans. It would be impractical and impossible to have pics of all of them. (One of the criticisms). Instead, he's sharing his process...how you can take a community of well-chosen plants and use them in endless flexibility to create a special garden, all your own. And, let me say that here in Wisconsin I was able to find many of his recommended plants on clearance in the fall. Fall is a perfect time to plant a garden in most areas of the country. You can save A LOT of money on grasses, etc, by buying them on clearance when everyone else is ignoring the garden centers. The types of plants Diblik recommends are often on steep clearance in autumn: grasses, salvias, nepetas, etc.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2015 by MM in Wisconsin
One of the best garden books I have ever owned!
Format: Paperback
I do a lot of gardening and I’ve read a lot of gardening books. This is an exceptionally good one. Roy Diblik is super knowledgeable and conveys that knowledge very clearly. He focuses on about 60 plants and makes it clear exactly how you can combine them effectively. The garden plans are actually clear and actionable. I highly, highly recommend this book. He is also on YouTube and those videos reinforce the lessons in the book.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2026 by StevenH
Excellent guide to developing a meadow or natural garden
Format: Paperback
The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden Roy Diblik, of 30 years experience as a plantsman and garden designer, in "The Know Maintenance Garden" has given us an excellent guide to "meadow" or the more modern term "natural" gardening. Roy starts by stating the philosophy of his gardening approach, illustrating his approach with good and bad examples. Roy does not like the "old" style garden of each plant as an individual set in a sea of wood chips. He would rather see a prairie like sea of color and texture spreading across the landscape. He moves into choosing a site with suggestions for pre-established lawns, to newly built construction site, to old gardens. Then he tells us how to start, how to prepare the soil, how to choose plants and how to plant the plants. He includes an excellent list of 74 hardy, common, standard stock perennials that he has used in his native Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa area, meaning zones 3 - 5 in the upper Midwest. This puts him on the west side of Lake Michigan, a major divide for plant ranges. His descriptions, planting instructions, care and maintenance suggestions, and comments on the plants are right on, easy to follow, and very helpful. The images are well done and illustrative. Roy does not talk much about the trees and shrubs that could form structure and boarder for these gardens. Then Roy lays out 62 garden plans for 10 x 14 foot spaces. He does say these spaces could be combined or divided up as fits different garden sizes. There are shade plans and sun plans. These plans are well done and easily followed. They also lend themselves to dividing and combining. I would have liked to see more pictures of the gardens following the plans. This is a well written book full of suggestions for moving into meadow or natural gardening. Following the instructions in this book, given the time and money, one could develop several beautiful gardens solving most garden problems. A very good buy for anyone interested in developing a meadow or natural garden.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2014 by gt surber
A Generous Collection of Answers That Too Often Withholds the “Why”
Format: Paperback
Roy Diblik’s The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden is considerably more ambitious than its title initially suggests. Its most important contribution is not the promise of an easier perennial garden. It is the proposition that successful planting begins when we stop thinking primarily about individual plants and start thinking about how plants live together. That is an important idea. Diblik asks the gardener to understand site conditions, growth habits, compatibility, competition, seasonal behavior, establishment, and maintenance before assembling a planting. Plants are not simply selected because they look attractive together. They become members of communities whose populations occupy space differently, interact through time, and require stewardship as a collective system. The book is also remarkably approachable. Diblik provides a substantial vocabulary of usable plants and numerous 10 by 14 foot planting plans that can be adapted, divided, repeated, and combined. For someone trying to move beyond conventional specimen and mulch perennial gardening, there is a great deal here to work with. The slow teaching style, plant profiles, photographs, combinations, proportions, and plans make a potentially complicated subject appear unusually accessible. But the more seriously I took Diblik’s ideas, the more I found myself asking questions the book did not answer. Diblik places considerable importance on proportions within combinations. That is much more sophisticated than simply telling us that plant A looks good with plant B. But why a particular ratio? Is it controlling visual dominance, competitive balance, ground occupation, recurrence, seasonal continuity, biomass, maintenance, or something else? If the proportions come primarily from Diblik’s accumulated empirical experience, that is valuable knowledge, but I wanted him to explain the observations that led to those proportions. The same problem appears with plant selection. Why these particular plants? The book gives readers plenty of plants to work with, which is one of its strengths. But a transferable design method should also allow us to determine what can replace them. If plant A is unavailable or inappropriate to my site, what characteristics of A must its substitute preserve? Height? Phenology? root behavior? competitive strategy? persistence? spatial role? flowering period? Without understanding why a plant occupies its position in a community, substitution eventually becomes another version of “trust me.” I was similarly confused by the relationship between Diblik’s paintings and his planting plans. The idea is fascinating: proportions and patterns derived from paintings become percentages and arrangements of plants. But the translation mechanism remains insufficiently explained. What exactly is being extracted from the painting: color, value, rhythm, visual weight, figure and ground, distribution, or proportion? Why does one pictorial relationship become a particular percentage or spatial arrangement? And how do the biological behaviors of living plants alter the original visual idea? I could see that a process had occurred without feeling that I had been taught enough to reproduce the process independently. Diblik also frequently invokes important gardens, designers, and horticulturists who influenced his development, including in the aptly titled “Been There, Done That” chapter. Those encounters are interesting as professional and intellectual biography. But precedent does not provide a causal free pass. References to Oudolf, Great Dixter, or another respected authority can establish lineage and influence, but their reputations cannot explain why a particular planting relationship works. I wanted the book to move more consistently from authority and example to mechanism: What was observed? What principle was inferred? How was it tested? Under what conditions does it work? When does it fail? The modular plans create another unresolved question: scale. A 10 by 14 foot plant community is a useful teaching unit, but scaling up a planting is not simply a matter of connecting additional 10 by 14 foot modules. A larger landscape acquires responsibilities that may not exist within the individual module: circulation, distant legibility, hierarchy, major spatial structure, edges, relationships among planting areas, maintenance logistics, and continuity or deliberate discontinuity across a site. More planting is an increase in magnitude. It is not necessarily an explanation of how planting design operates at a larger organizational scale. This points to the central contradiction I found in the book. The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden is extremely accessible in presentation but considerably less accessible in reasoning. Diblik is generous with plants, combinations, percentages, plans, paintings, precedents, and the accumulated results of decades of experience. He is less consistently generous with the decision making machinery connecting them. That distinction matters. Expert experience deserves respect, but “trust me, I have done this for decades” is not the same thing as teaching. The most valuable instructional books eventually allow the reader to stop needing the author. They expose enough of the underlying reasoning that we can confront a new plant, site, climate, combination, or scale and work out an appropriate answer ourselves. Despite these criticisms, I consider this a valuable book. Diblik’s underlying proposition that we should replace isolated plant selection with an understanding of plant relationships is important, and there is considerably more intellectual substance here than in the average book of perennial combinations. The plans are useful. The plant vocabulary is substantial. The attention to behavior and maintenance is worthwhile. Most importantly, the book encourages readers to see a planting as a changing community rather than a collection of individual specimens. My frustration ultimately comes from recognizing how much more design intelligence seems to exist behind the work than the book manages to articulate. The deeper book I wanted was already hiding inside this one: why these plants, why these proportions, why these relationships, why this spatial organization, and how those decisions should change when the conditions change. The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden gets tantalizingly close to teaching that larger method. For me, it stops one step short. Four stars. Valuable, influential, and genuinely useful, but I wanted considerably more access to the thinking behind the answers.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2026 by Aaron T.
Contemporary landscape design explained well
Format: Paperback
This is one of the best garden and design books I have purchased in recent years! It seems like a good fit for gardeners who want good advice on what will look good and be easy to maintain (end of story), and the more ambitious gardener or garden designer looking to expand their plant pallet and develop more of a personal style. If you just want to plant what's in the plans, this is an adaptable pallet. Though the author says the plants were chosen primarily for the northern half of the United States - many of the plants listed will also do well in the Southeastern part of the US (and a pretty good proportion are natives or native cultivars that grow here naturally). So I wouldn't blow past this if you are a Southern/Southeastern gardener - there are a lot of plants (and plans) that you can use with impunity. Some people have remarked that they wish there were pictures provided for the design plans, and I can see why this is a detraction for some - there is no quick way to flip though and decide which one you like best and want to plant. But I actually appreciate this feature. Even the same plants planted in the same formation will look different depending on their orientation, the slope of the land, your local light conditions (etc) - so if you pick what you like from a picture in a book - you may not get what you want in the end anyway. Imagining how the plants will look and perform in your space (and seeing how they look and perform in reality) is an exercise too good to pass up!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2016 by K. Lincourt
Makes you think!
Format: Paperback
I've been gardening for decades while working full time, so I design my plantings for easy maintenance ("know maintenance"). I've made my share of mistakes with plants so I'm always trying to learn more. I usually check garden books out at the library because they can be more vanity pieces by the author than any real new information to me. I'm glad I bought this one. The author provides a menu of plants with their ideal placement clearly defined, and then gives you a roster of garden plans combining them. Based on another book, I'm trying to plant for 4 seasons of interest whenever I can, so I appreciate the photos and text about the various plants at different seasons. Some plans come from existing gardens around the world, while others are apparently just made up by the author based on impressionist paintings. I like the fact that so many grasses are included in the plantings (and they go well beyond the over-used Karl Foerster). I found myself really studying this book, rereading it. I thought I had picked out my favorite garden plan to create next season but (based on the author's advice throughout the book), I may just come up with my own design. I feel like this book gave me a new skill set and for that I am grateful.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2019 by D. Vaughan
C+/B- Entry into the field
Format: Paperback
I got this book because I am trying to create some perennial beds in my large yard like the ones featured in this book, a "naturalized" look with large swaths of color, texture and form. There is a lot of good, basic information here and I like the three sections--the design basics, some descriptions of classic plant choices, and then some sample layouts and descriptions of successful examples. That's the good. And the photos can serve as inspiration. The bad is that they do not provide the names of the plants featured in the photos, so you have no idea how to recreate the look or even ballpark it unless you are great at identifying perennials very specifically from a distance. Not just the species but the cultivar would have been sooooo helpful. The photos have descriptive text, that's good, but lack plant species specifics. The range of plants covered is rather limited. It's fine as far as my zone goes, you've already been warned by other reviews that if you are in a semi-tropical or arid situation this is not for you and probably not the greatest in an alpine or way up north situation either. But to add to the problems, they do not give the USDA plant zones in the plant descriptions, which would have been an easy add. Lastly, I think there were a limited number of example gardens, which is really what I bought the book for. Particularly with regards to shady situations, which is again, my specific situation. The color palette for shade was limited, even taking in to account that a shade palette already starts out with limitations. The text is small and dense, and while the information is solid, it could have benefited from more sub headings and some "chunking" if that's a word. And some more illustrations or just some way of more visual summaries of the information contained in the dense text. The photos are great but not as illustrative as they could have been with more sidebars on what was actually going on in the photo, for example a photo of a garden and then a graphic illustration of the planting scheme. As it is, you have to be fairly sophisticated in visually assessing plants to read what is going on in the landscape shots. I'll probably refer to this book often and use it, but if I had been in a bookstore with other selections I might not have chosen this one. But such is the book buying environment so I can say that this is a good book and it might be perfect for you bearing in mind the "YMMV" principle.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2021 by working girl
Love this book
Format: Paperback
I got this book after seeing Mr. Diblik present at the Millersville Native Plant conference this past June. I read the book cover to cover, completely enjoyed his insights into planting a perennial garden. He gives an intimate look at each plant that is part of the many included garden plans. He lets you know which plants work well together (I love his plant "first date" idea), it's a really perfect book for a novice gardener like me who needs help deciding which plants to select. The pictures of his various gardens are stunning and really inspiring. Only slightly negative thing that I found is that not every plant listed in his plans are native, which is fine as the non-natives aren't invasive, but it would be good to add in the plant descriptions, which would help save me time having to research whether native or non-native using other resources.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2018 by Becky