This title by P. Allen Smith is excellent for floral designers. Whether you’re looking for a book for yourself or as a gift, “P. Allen Smith’s Living in the Garden Home-Connecting the Seasons with Containers, Crafts, and Celebrations” is very suitable for flower lovers. With lush color illustrations, this title was published by Clarkson Potter.

It emphasizes a seasonal approach to home and garden decorating. With color illustrated, step by step directions for each project, this is an excellent title for novice floral designers.

This has lots of ideas and projects for each season using special seasonal flowers and plant materials.

Those with cutting gardens will find this title is very useful. It devotes an entire section to cut flower gardens. The author provides step by step instructions for starting a cutting garden. This discusses all the gardening techniques and basic gardening information one needs to grow cut and dried flowers.

The author also covers all the basics on harvesting, conditioning, and arranging flowers. This also has an extensive section on dried flowers as well. There are step by step directions for harvesting and drying everlastings, including a project featuring hydrangeas. There are also directions for drying various kinds of seed pods and grasses. The author provides lists of suitable plants for drying. This also explains how to preserve leaves. Among the everlasting projects is a delightful dried flower topiary.

A separate section is devoted to each of the four seasons. For each season, the author presents his signature plants and flowers, which he uses in the flower arrangements and projects. He recommends seasonal varieties that are especially good for cut flowers. For spring, this title showcases daffodils and tulips.

This title features a number of flower arrangements for various occasions and seasons. There are easy to follow instructions for each project.

For fall, this shows many wonderful ways to use pumpkins and gourds in tasteful displays indoors or out. The autumn designs also include centerpieces and cornucopias. You’ll also find a flower arrangement for Thanksgiving as well.

For winter, there are more holiday and seasonal projects than most people will have enough room to display. They include urns and window boxes filled with evergreen boughs and berried stems, winter bouquets of fresh flowers, holiday wreaths and swags using both fresh and dried materials. A number of these designs feature a rich array of fruits. For holiday entertaining, this has quite a few arrangements, including a number of centerpieces.