Michael Dirr, Manual of Woody Landscape Plants
Jan McDougall, who is a very fine Charleston horticulturist, says she cannot live without this book. I can’t say I use it as much as she does, but, if you live in the southeast, it is very useful in helping to figure out which varieties of a plant are most likely to do well in your area. It is not for beginners because it is sparsely illustrated, so you pretty much have to know what you are talking about before you begin.
For me, it suffers from the “coastal orphans” syndrome, meaning that Dirr is at UGA in Athens, and knows a lot more about conditions there than he does about the hot, steamy coast. For instance, he’s in love with Itea virginica (sweetspire), which is indeed a very nice shrub but, I discover to my sorrow, likes a lot more moisture in the soil than is common in a garden on the sandy coast sans irrigation.