Book gives gardeners blueprint for having blooms from frost to frost

Having a garden that blooms from frost to frost is a dream most gardeners share.

And one few attain.

"The Ever-Blooming Flower Garden" by Lee Schneller aims to fill those gaps with a blueprint for continuous color.

"A lot of times, even in the gardens of experienced people, they will have bright times where a lot of stuff is blooming, and bad times," Schneller said. "This technique solves this problem and also suggests plants with very good foliage so that the garden looks good throughout the year because the structure is good."

By planning ahead and designing a layout of the garden, Schneller's system allows gardeners to see if they have enough things blooming in each bloom period and whether their colors are complimentary.

The book breaks Schneller's system into five steps, includes several designs for ever-blooming beds and also features a plant palette of colors and a flower catalogue to choose plants compatible with your zone and landscape.

Formerly a Japanese translator, Schneller decided she wanted to change her life's direction.

"I had a whole other career before I started this," Schneller said. "I was a technical Japanese translator for 10 years and majored in Chinese literature and language in college. I lived in Japan and China. Gardening was my second career.

"I had done some vegetable gardening and a little bit of flower gardening over the years, but I'd always had this naé?ve idea that making a living as a gardener would be the idyllic occupation.

"I decided to make a change, and because I didn't know a lot of about flower gardening, I got a job with a fine gardening company around here. I thought I'd learn from someone who's actually doing this. But after working there for two weeks, I was fired on my birthday. I was crushed and it played into my fear that I was unemployable. It turned out to be a really dysfunctional company and everyone else either quit or was fired after me. But I had already closed my translating business, so I bought a pile of books and charged a cheap price to start and went around knocking on doors in 1995."

Her first job was a beauty salon on a busy street in Rockland, Maine, near her home.

"I had lots of referrals and requests after that," she said. "And over the years, I came up with a one-page system for putting together a continuously blooming garden and refined it and tested different variations."

Schneller started teaching workshops and the response was "astronomical."

"Hundreds of people in mid-coast Maine have taken the workshop," she said. "It's very usable and is a way to help make your garden successful in terms in not having a burst of glory then fizzle out. And it's helpful for beginners."

Through the workshop, Schneller got the idea to write a book.

"I was teaching a workshop with the material and handing it out, and I thought this seems like something people want and is helpful," she said. "So I took a really intensive garden writing workshop. The teachers were encouraging and it seemed like a good complement for what I was doing.

"Because of my translating work, I had done a lot of writing. That part was not a problem. Learning to make the subject more interesting, that's where the writing workshop came in. That helped me put more color in my writing and helped me refine my work.

"This is my first and probably my last book. It really took seven years and lots and lots of work just gathering the data. There's so much data on bloom time that I gathered myself, and I grew trials of all those plants. And getting the photos, following the gardens through the whole year. It was really a lot of work. Almost all of the pictures in the book are mine. I'm not a photographer so I was really glad they were willing to use the photos."

Schneller continues to run her own gardening business in Maine, where she specializes in continuously blooming gardens and Japanese-inspired gardens. She also gives garden workshops.

"I went to give a talk in New Jersey," she said, "and when I got back, there was an e-mail from a man who had attended my talk. He'd designed a garden and had questions. I can't tell you how gratifying it is that people are just picking the book up and doing it."

"It really is kind of all in this book. It's something that a beginner can pick up and design a garden and plant it but experienced gardeners will get something out of it as well."