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Tips for Carefree Landscapes: Over 500 Sure-Fire Ways to Beautify Your Yard and Garden
All books in the category Green Gardening and Landscaping
by: Marianne Binetti
Topics include:
Lazy landscapers rejoice! Here's an invaluable book for everyone who loves to have an attractive garden, but hates to spend lots of time and energy on it. Marianne Binetti's philosophy is simple: Don't fight Mother Nature! Investing time up front -- preparing the soil and selecting the best plants for your area -- can save hours of sweat in the long run.
You'll learn how to keep down lawn maintenance by incorporating flowering shrubs and groundcovers into your landscape and by not striving for the "perfect" lawn. How to plant hedges that need little or no pruning. When you can save a problem plant from bugs and diseases and when you should just "throw in the trowel."
Professional garden writer Marianne Binetti shares hundreds of expert tips that guarantee maximum gardening enjoyment with a minimum of fuss. Tips for Carefree Landscapes answers the most-asked gardening questions and recommends the easiest plants to grow in both sunny and shady areas of your garden. Chapters on shrubs, bulbs, annuals, perennials, container gardening -- even low-maintenance roses -- explain exactly where you can cut corners and where you can't.
Here are just a few of the creative, sensible, and time-saving suggestions you'll find in Tips for Carefree Landscapes:
* Own an old, leaky hose? Punch a few more holes in it, put it along a shrub border or perennial bed, and cover it with bark mulch. You'll conserve water and save yourself work.
* Don't want to wait for compost? Try "spot composting" by digging small holes in your beds and throwing in your old weeds. You'll improve the soil as you go.
* Have a supply of Styrofoam "peanuts" around the house? Put them to good use by placing them in the bottom of a large planter -- they provide good drainage.
About the Author
Garden columnist and owner of a landscape design business, Marianne Binetti has been searching for the perfect plant--impossible to kill, but always in full bloom. It's something most gardeners are probably looking for, not to mention an honest request coming from the author of the Storey titles, Shortcuts for Accenting Your Garden and Tips for Carefree Landscape. Mother of three, Marianne's articles have been featured in Woman's Day magazine, and she writes a syndicated gardening column called "The Compleat Home Gardener" which runs in more than 20 newspapers in Western Washington, where she resides with her husband Joe. in 1988 she received the National Garden Bureau's annual Exemplary Journalism Award. Marianne has also worked for florists, nurseries and greenhouses for nearly 20 years. Binetti is a member of the Garden Writers Association of America and Plant Amnesty.
Reviews:
This was my first, and easily the best gardening book I have ever purchased (and I own about 20). I had just purchased my first home, and was new to gardening. Up to that point practically anything I put into the ground withered and died. I picked this book up at a rummage sale (the title really pulled me in), and have never regretted it. The book is chock full of great gardening tips, such as how to improve your soil, what plants to choose for what sites, and easy watering and pest control tips. It lists for you all the best easy-care plants to choose (and divides it into categories such as shrubs, perennials, annuals, roses, etc.) and tells you what plants to avoid. Each chapter also has a question and answer section that adds additional info. Ms. Binetti has a great writing style which is easy to understand, and very encouraging to the reader. For a novice gardener, this book will almost guarantee success (it did for me), and instill gardening confidence to encourage you to expand your knowledge and skills by going out there and gardening! I cannot recommend this book enough.
Finally--some gardening advice I can use: This is quite possibly the best gardening book I've ever read. I have discovered that, while I love gardens, I don't especially like gardening. Thanks to Marianne Binetti and her very practical advice, I can have an attractive, low-maintenance garden in no time. Especially helpful are her picks for the best bulbs, perennials, and shrubs for lazy gardeners, including sturdy species of roses for those of us who thought roses were too fussy to grow. Marianne's style is easy to read, funny, and makes me feel so much better about myself and my less-than-meticulous gardening skills. I highly recommend this book.
Grinning and gardening together: If you're a gardener or a would-be gardener, and you like books that make you grin, books that include lots of easily understood information, and books that are short and succinct, Marianne Binetti's Tips for Carefree Landscapes is the book for you. And, Marianne's tips are perfect for those of you who don't have hours and hours to spend gardening and "lawning." The last chapter, "Gardening Horror Stories" with sub-titles such as The Footprints of Death, lets readers know that they're not the only ones who have had or will have fluky garden experiences! And each story has a "gardening moral." Read. Learn. Grin and enjoy! I did.
This is the best book so far for lazy gardener like myself: I love buying books and this book is the best book I have ever bought for gardening. This is a book for the weekend gardener. I only spent may be 1 hour a week for the yard. It is fun to read. This book is really good for beginner too. Marianne told a lot of not to do stories. It also contains what are the best plants to use for a carefree garden. I remembered I found this book too plain the first time I read it, but over the past 4 years of gardening I can only said that what are in this book really make sense. If I have followed it's advises from the start I would save myself lot of troubles I am having now
