CANNIFER LTD
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Book information
The author of the book is Keith Hayward. For the past 24 years Keith and his wife Christine have held the UK National Collection of cannas under the auspices of Plant Heritage.
The book includes photographs and decriptions of 170 garden varieties. These include modern varieties, old classic varieties which continue to be available, some good old varieties which may be lost but which may still be grown somewhere and be re-discovered. It includs a report on the UK Royal Horticultural Society canna trial which was held in 2002. 152 varieties were tested and 28 varieties were awarded the coveted RHS AGM Award. Most of these award-winning varieties continue to be available and are illustrated in the book.
It includes a gallery of cannas as grown in parks and gardens, and civic authorities, and cannas from around the world. Keith and Christine have visited various countries to see cannas, including the USA, Argentina and Bolivia. Cannas are native to the sub-tropical Americas.
It has a section on the botany of cannas, including anatomy and taxonomy. Cannas are quite unusual in the world of plants, in that they have their own plant family, cannaceae, in which there is only one genus, Canna. So although cannas are quite different to all other types of plants, they are all very similar to each other.
A large part of the book is devoted to the various methods of canna cultivation. Other sections address the breeding of new varieties, pests and diseases, and even the edibility of cannas.
We suggest that this book would be an ideal Christmas present for many gardening friends.
Please feel free to forward the link to this website to anyone you think may be intersted in purchasing this book, in the UK or overseas. https://theworldofcannas.co.uk
Contents Page
Back cover
further information.
Many readers can ignore this section, which deals with the project of writing and publishing this book.
The author uses the Linux operating system on his personal computers (desktop and laptop). The particular Linux "distro" he uses is Ubuntu. Ubuntu is at least as powerful as Microsoft Windows and doesn't need anti-virus software. For book publishing software he used Scribus. For editing graphics and photographs he used Gimp. For online sales he used Mal's-e shopping cart. Ubuntu, Scribus, Gimp and Mal's-e shopping cart are all free software. Almost all the photographs were taken by the author. His camera is a Canon EOS1300D. The publishing resolution is edited to 300 dpi.
The world of book printing and publishing has many untrustworthy companies, and the trade contains many warnings for the unwary. He was particularly careful in choosing a printer, and eventually chose BookPrintingUK, a division of Bonacia Ltd, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. It proved to be a good choice; the service is excellent, and the quality of printing and photograpic reproduction is outstandingly good. Having had a stock of books printed, he decided to self-publish though his company Cannifer ltd.