I am trying to make a plant book with the flowers I have in my gardens. The tags you get when you purchase the plant doesn't give you enough information on how to care for them and the do's and don'ts, protection for winter, fertilizing and pests etc. I was wondering if anyone would know of any websites to go to for this information. I found one so far ETERA'S Plant Search and find it very good but some shrubs and plants I have are not on their list. I find my book very handy as I just take it to the garden with me. Its so handy when trying to group plants together. Any suggestions?Would love to get this ready for gardening this year.

You sound like a very organized person! The plant book is a great idea; I have something similar where I keep the plant tags in plastic pages that have pockets (like kids use for collecting hockey cards etc....) I use little index cards to note important information about the plant (pruning, feeding, where I got iy from, when I planted it and anything else that seems relevant!) and I tuck the cards in behind the tags in the pockets.

When looking for information on plants, I've found that I use multiple sources of information. The the web sites I go to most often are the Ohio state University Plant Dictionary at:

http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu/plants.html

and the Heritage Perennials site at:

http://www.perennials.com/

The OSU plant dictionary allows you to search by either botanical or common name. It has pictures of the plants with a brief description and then, at the bottom, of the page, a link to their detailed text database on the particular plant.

Heritage Perennials also has good pictures and very concise listing of key data about the plant. They have an excellent 'Advanced Search' function which allows you to select key characteristics you're looking for in a plant and it'll list plants that meet that criteria - a great tool when you're looking for just the right plant for a specific spot. In this week's articles on this site, there's one about their 'top 10' plants for this year. It has links to their data on those plants so you can sample the information on that site when you read that article....

The other key reference source I use is Christopher Brickell's The Gardiner's Encyclopedia of Plants & Flowers. My copy is fairly old now but you can still find this book, or a similar Reader's Digest book, if you look. It's not cheap though - books like that tend to be $80-$100+...

For wildflowers or native plants, The New England Wildflower Society's Growing and Propagating Wildflowers is an essential reference. They also have a web site at:

http://www.newfs.org/index.html

Everybody has their own favorite reference sources, so I'm sure you'll get lots of different suggestions...

Another very useful site is www.neoflora.com This site has a very large database of plants with a wealth of information on their listings.

Another very useful site is www.neoflora.com This site has a very large database of plants with a wealth of information on their listings.

neoflora is the best i have found so far but arbourquest.com is also good.

Hi Myrnah,

I use a number of sources,books etc., but I found the web-site called Ontario Library Services for gardening very helpful. Check it out. www.library.on.ca/information/gardens.html

The information covers a wide range of gardening venues for Ontario and Canada. I think it will help. Ian Watt

I am in Florida for the winter and use quite frequently these:

http://www.botany.com/

http://www.mgonline.com/

http://www.floridata.com/main_fr.cfm?state=ref_master&viewsrc=lists/plists.cfm?list=type

http://www.virtualherbarium.org/gl/famtm.html