Late Summer Flowers by Marina Christopher is, I think, the first ever book on perennials for this sometimes difficult and frustrating season, a season between the summer finery and fall foliage colour which is rarely the subject of special focus. Marina runs Phoenix Perennial Plants, a superb nursery in Hampshire (southern England) - but, I'm sorry to say, a nursery without a website although you'll find details here. She also runs practical courses where she passes on the experience that she’s accumulated over the years working with plants.

Her passion for these plants and her practical experience run through this book like seams of gold and it's not just that she's grown and propagated them - but she thinks about what she's doing and develops her feelings about them and her techniques. And then she spills it all in this valuable book.

Her writing is direct, and her wisdom on how to associate these late season flowers with each other for the best effect encourages us all to integrate more late flowers into our borders or, if we have space, set aside an area specifically where late summer flowers can dazzle us as do flowers of earlier in the season. And it’s not just a paean to chrysanthemums and asters – we all know about those but there are so many other recommendations here.

Marina, a colleague in judging the Royal Horticultural Society’s trials, is of course British but her book has wider value as evidenced by this recommendation from Valerie Easton in The Seattle Times. Goodness, I almost forgot – there are also great pictures from Steven Wooster. You can buy the book in North America here, and in Britain here.