Personally I love all aspects of gardening. From adding compost to the soil - planting - weeding - watering - harvesting and photographing it's all a relaxing pleasure. I even enjoy mowing the lawn. If there's one downside to all this it's because I live sixty miles outside of Las Vegas NV and while getting the soil ready for fall planting is necessary, it's a little tough right now. The reason is that the temperature here today is a cool 116 degrees.

My list has been changing pretty much every year... LOL I totally love Lavatera both the pink ones and white ones. This is one plant that is on my "can't do without" list. Then I'd say columbines, coleus, poppies (but they don't last long enough....), sunflowers.... This year I went "zinnia crazy" because I really loved the Cactus Flowering type I had last year. Since this will be my third full year gardening here there are MANY MANY things for me to learn about yet and try! So my list for next year could look very different! LOL Ang

Graham Stuart Thomas is a well-known English author who wrote an excellent two volume reference, buttressed by additional books on roses, groundcovers, etc. Not a first pick, because of the English author and the lack of illustrations, but the two-volume set is fairly all-inclusive, so that when you finally have something you can look it up and know what you have. If you see them on sale anywhere they are worth picking up. For shrubs, I agree that Dirr is the man. Ignore him at your peril, but if you have his book, at least you will have been warned. I took him with a grain of salt regarding the eventual height of Allegheny viburnums, but he was absolutely right. He was right about pruning, too. I have an older set of two reference books on flowers that I especially love because it gives an excellent hand-drawn illustration of each, a good description of habitat, and a history of where each plant was first discovered, but it is temporarily packed away and I can't remember the name...maybe someone else will know. It may be out of print, but it should not be if it is.

Hi HW, you said it: It is difficult to choose just one. If I may choose just one from different categories, ha ha ha..always trying to stretch it. spring bulbs: Calgary Tulips..large flowered, low to the ground and heavy substance, lasts a long time. Shrub: dwarf Minnisota Snowflake Mock Orange..long bloomtime, covered with double white extremely fragrant white flowers. Summer bulbs: it would have to be any of the lilies, candidum, trumpet, asiatic, species, turks cap, Oriental, formanosanum. They all last a good while and most are very fragrant too. The large flowers make a good impact. perennial is really tough...I'm probably going to say Carolina Phlox Miss Lingard...early and long blooming, fragrant. vine: tough again, but I'd have to say moonflower. annuals..ha ha ha..too tough to pick just one. Really, so for this post I'll say zinna white profusion.. but there really are so many that I wouldn't do without. I can't seem to find plumbago here locally. I know it isn't hardy here, but I'd still like to try it. I don't have much of a shock value white, maybe the Blue River II Hibiscus, for sheer flower size. Same is true of the dinner plate white dahlias. Thanks for the post, it makes me realize, I don't have an absolute favorite..way too many..peonies, iris, lilac, yikes, I feel guilty not mentioning half of the garden..ha ha ha...enjoy...JoAnn