Everything Orange

 Karen Platt, known for her fascination with black plants, has published an ebook entitled "Fruit Cocktail: Orange, Peach and Apricot Plants for the Garden" (order it from Platt's website). 

I don't think I've ever reviewed an electronic book before, and as a lover of paper and print, I find it disquieting. But since orange is hands down my favorite color in the garden, and since to my knowledge this is the only book, online or in print, devoted to orange flowers, I'll give it a go....

I love Platt's abundant photos of orange plants. I appreciate her detailed knowledge and exacting color descriptions. You'd expect anyone who can come up with such a range of orange synonyms as "amber, citrus, toffee, turmeric, paprika, ginger, citrus, toffee, mango and melon" to be good at distinguishing between what is really pink and what is truly orange, and Platt is.

The book starts out with useful advice on planning a sunset-hued garden and suggestions for color combinations; orange can be sparked with white, diluted by yelllow, or effectively played off blue. But most of the book is an alphabetical list of one orange flowering plant after another (2300 in all) with up-to-date cultivar lists and cultivation tips. I miss a table of contents,  an index, and all those remnants of "bookish-ness" that might help me feel like this was really a book and not a list with pretty photos.

"Fruit Cocktail" is undoubtedly useful in composing a garden of orange plants, but its electronic format  made me wonder if soon my books will as much artifacts as my typewriters.....

Comments

[Kimberly]

Oooo, I need this. My containers are all spicy red with predominantly orange plants. red/yellow/orange marigolds in containers with various edibles, tiger lilies, tropic canna with beautiful foliage, orange climbing nasturtium, red and orange tuberous begonias, and lots and lots of coleus. Heck, I even orange and red bell peppers.

Also, I'm not a fan of ebooks either, I miss the tactile flipping of pages.

[Karen Platt]

Many thanks for the review Val. ebooks can be printed out - think of them as environmentally friendly though. No wastage of paper, no hi-res photography, no miles of transportation of heavy books and you save on postage. Another great advantage is that you can make the type size bigger.

For me a list is what you normally find in an article (not Val's very thorough ones) -as such it implies that the book has no descriptions - which is the whole point of the book - to describe plants. With an alphabetical layout, I have no qualms about not including an index - all ebooks are searchable too.