The Dry Garden: Landmark book for California

Posted on | February 19, 2010 | No Comments

Until now, there was always one sure way to tell whether or not you had hired the right landscape designer or architect for a job in California. The right one had a copy of Bob Perry’s 1992 book “Landscape Plants for Western Regions,” which was used so often that it occupied the passenger seat of his or her truck. That criterion changed this week. After eighteen years, Perry has finally produced a successor volume: “Landscape Plants for California Gardens.” For those of you worried about how to comply with the water budgets prescribed in last year’s Assembly Bill 1881, Perry gives the evapotranspiration rates not just for thousands of plants, but also correlates them for every California climate zone. He looks at water efficiency of irrigation systems. And, the reason landscapers loved him, after grouping plants by palette, he conclusively links those palette groups back to their water budgets.

“Landscape Plants for California Gardens” is what the Sunset books would be if they focussed on California and were written by a man who is both a licensed landscape architect and a professor emeritus of landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona. To see samples of the book, or purchase it, go to Perry’s website. Perry will be making one of his rare public appearances tomorrow at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. For a profile of Perry and more on the new book, click here to go to this week’s “The Dry Garden” column in the Los Angeles Times.

This post has been updated.

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