This title is designed as an accessible scholarly resource with practical information for gardeners. It encompasses a vast range of plants grown on a domestic or commercial scale in private gardens or present in specialist and botanical collections. They are plants grown for ornament, for amenity or for economic use, and they include a vast range of cultivars. Each entry has been written according to the exacting scientific standards. Features include: 50,000 plants described; concise botanical accounts of species in cultivation throughout the world, in line with the latest taxonomic thinking; practical advice on how to grow every plant described; nearly 200 articles on horticultural science and practice, newly commissioned from leading authorities; 175 biographies of figures in horticulture, botany and garden design; fully cross referenced; cumulative bibliography, arranged by subject; botanical and horticultural glossaries - a grammar of gardening; and 3000 specially commissioned line drawings of plants and gardening techniques.