Cool Flowers: How to Grow and Enjoy Long-Blooming Hardy Annual Flowers Using Cool Weather Techniques

Lisa Mason Zieglar is providing the beginning flower gardener with a wealth of information about growing cool flowers. If you love flowers, you need this book!

This book is good. I’m not in the mood to be reading the authors story right now. I just want plant information. There IS good plant wisdom here but there’s a lot of story. I’m sure in a different season of my life I will enjoy reading this book again. Lisa is a sweet woman with a sweet gardening story and some good tips in gardening. The tips and tricks could probably boil down to several pages. Only for a specific person in a specific situation would I recommend this book. That person would really enjoy this book.

Especially appreciate the information for individual flowers. Facts included are sun exposure, how to start from seed, their zone, height, spacing; reseeding potential, deer resistance and whether to plant in the garden or containers and how to cut. Appreciate the special seed starting tips for each variety of flower.Kaye R

Lisa Ziegler has become a well-recognized expert flower farmer with many years of experience. This great book will teach you how to plant in fall for the earliest spring blooming cut flowers. Great for home gardeners & cut flower farmers alike, she uses a novel method of seed starting which can be purchased from her farm store (The Gardener’s Workshop Cut Flower Farm). The method is compact, easy to do at home-no greenhouse or extra space is needed. She is an organic farmer successfully using non-chemical methods to harvest bountiful crops, but you can learn to grow at any level (from a 10’ plot up to acres) with this book as your guide. Can be adapted to all USDA growing zones ( & internationally if you convert temperatures to your seasons). She is a generous and talented teacher & writer. This book is a bargain, and also includes a free video short course. Highly recommend her books & courses! See her other book, “Vegetables Love Flowers,” also about growing flowers-warm season annuals. If you hope to learn more, look for her hands on videos on FB & on-line education courses on her website. No-I am not related, nor an affiliate, just a happy customer! I paid full price for her book and instantly became a fan. You will too, I promise! If you want the book to give as a gift, she also sells direct and will custom autograph. It arrives beautifully wrapped & is gift ready for any occasion. Shipping would not be as fast as prime, though If you have a little time to spare, the presentation they ship is very nice!

This book got me excited to plant hardy annuals! Lisa kept my interest with personal experiences, life events, etc. at the same time sharing all information I sought from the book. This is a great book as a gift for someone who looks forward to Winter so they can start sowing seeds. This will show them they do not need to wait that long! They can start mid to late summer! This is why I was intrigued, and I have now indoor sown my violas, pansies, snapdragons and rudbeckia seeds. Next will be my digitalis, hollyhocks, and bachelor’s button. I’m excited and delighted!

People kept telling me to buy this book for months before I finally purchased it. When I got it, I wondered why I had waited so long! Fifteen pages in and I already knew more than I had before I picked it up--and knew I was going to love it. For anyone in the mid-atlantic or northeast--or really anyone with some type of 'cold weather'...this book will come in very handy if you want to get earlier flower blooms in spring. I had no idea that there were so many varieties I could plant in fall to overwinter and bloom earlier in spring! Of course you think well sure these 2-3 plants, but there are over 15 in this book. One of the big eye openers for me was sweet peas! I struggled along to start them early this spring and did not get blooms til June in our zone 7 climate. I'm trying them this fall to see how early I can get blooms next year.Along with the information on each are tips on germination, growth, harvesting on each plant, so helpful. I like that the book is small, an easy read (who has oodles of time to be sitting reading pontifications?!), and you can easily grab it later if you want to reference something. I have caught myself referencing this book to other growers when they ask questions as in 'Well if you had Cool Flowers...you could read your answer'... exactly how others would address me when I had questions relating to hardy annuals, overwintering, how to get blooms earlier in spring, etc. Info on soil blocking, overwintering in climates with snow etc are fantastic. I especially love how every plant has specifics on just how low you can go zone-wise so that this book is not just for people in Lisa's zone 7, but I know a few zone 5 growers who also swear by it.If you love flowers and want to expand your own personal garden OR grow commercially and want to extend your season for sales, either audience would benefit from reading this. Completely recommend.

Cool Flowers and Vegetables Love Flowers: Companion Planting for Beauty and Bounty are worth reading. Bonus: if you follow Lisa Mason Ziegler on social media, you will hear her voice in your head as you read the books. :) She shares a lot of knowledge on social media so I kept putting off purchasing her books thinking, I'll absorb it all and/or take notes. Yeah right. Finally, as summer quickly moves towards hardy annual seed starting time, I got serious and ordered both Cool Flowers and Vegetables Love Flowers: Companion Planting for Beauty and Bounty. No regrets. Now I have a quick reference for topics and am not going down a bunch of rabbit holes on the internet. Plus, since Lisa Mason Ziegler has so much experience, I can't imagine not gaining something from reading her books. Also, I read The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers, 2nd Edition by Lynn Byczynski, before and all the books are worth reading.

This book is absolutely awesome. I am so glad I found it. I have learned so much.. I can’t wait to plant my first hardy annuals this fall 2022. I made my first soil blocks today. It was so easy.

I use this book all the time as a reference and inspiration. Having spent so much on courses on how to grow my own flowers for sale, I wish I had just used this from the beginning. It would have been a lot cheaper and it’s full of the best education for would be and seasoned flower farmers!

Brought 2nd Hand as was not available otherwise. Like new quaility. The contents thus far seem very valuable.

Already planning my cool flowers planting before this year’s are in the ground.Excellent book for a cut flower grower or even a gardener eating to grow a cut flower patch in their garden or alottment.Not too long, packed with good info.

Absolutely love this book, as a flower farmer in the UK it has brilliant advice and clarifies for me when and how to sow cool flowers ie Hardy Annuals. I find myself referring to it often, and the authors personal story of how she came to be a flower farmer is very inspiring. So happy I purchased this lovely book.

Clear, concise, inspiring and with added value of the virtual book study.