'My heart lives in the garden. The practice of tending and cultivating a plant through a life cycle - seed to plant to flower - is so wondrous. And the beauty is infinite: the flowers, the foliage, the colours, form and texture. The art of gardening, at any scale, is both creative and intellectual and mindfully practical.'
A SUPER BLOOM is a natural phenomenon in which climate and conditions align to allow plants to flower in such abundance that they transform the landscape, bathing it in colour. When a super bloom arises, it is a miraculous sight. Plants respond to these conditions with a maximum abundance of flowers and colour.
Super Bloom is a love letter to flowers. It is a manifesto for maximum plants, maximum flowers, maximum beauty. It is perfect for the current time and trends. It also shows how to create your own super bloom.
Leading plant specialist Jac Semmler revives the appeal of treasured, old-world beautiful flowers for the modern garden. This is a comprehensive gardening how-to for beginners and experts alike, including:
- Care and growing notes, including notes on varieties
- Natural parameters (such as location, climate and aspect)
- Where to source your plants, with suppliers all over the world
- Plant biology (such as how root systems work and the importance of light, transpiration and photosynthesis)
- Soil ecology (with notes on the different types of soil, how you can test your own garden soil and how to improve various types for planting)
- Must-have and nice-to-have tools
- How to save your own seeds and organise your seed stash
- Tips on harvesting, conditioning and arranging cut flowers
Look out for the incredible array of Planting Partners for each plant, whether you want to plant a garden that flowers in succession, group your plants by height or colour, find flowers with similar growing conditions, or foliage friends to highlight blooms.
An innovative, immersive photographic style by Sarah Pannell illustrates techniques such as planting seeds, caring for seedlings, transplanting flowers, propagating and dividing rhizomes, training plants as well as offering a breathtaking bee’s eye view of the garden.
Natural beauty nourishes something deep within us. Whether it’s seeing a meadow of grasses or wildflowers, watching nasturtiums run rampant, marvelling at the smell of a particular rose, or watching the tulip heads wilt and drop, these are the moments that make us human, that connect us to the world and remind us that beauty is everywhere. Super Bloom is a modern gardening classic.
About the Author
Jac Semmler is a plant specialist, advising on living beauty, tending plants and the future of gardening. She is head of Plants & Strategy at The Plant Society and until 2021 was the head of the ornamental gardening and range at the Diggers Club, Australia's largest gardening club. Jac holds a certificate in Horticulture, a bachelor of arts, a bachelor of education, and a graduate certificate in Biosecurity Science (Plants). She grew up in a family of rural country plantswomen, surrounded by a diverse and abundant home garden of flowers and foliage in a new Australian style.
