Landscaping for Dummies

By Phillip Giroux, The National Gardening Association, Bob Beckstrom, et al.

Book Overview

Create the yard you have always yearned for

A beautiful landscape reflects well on your house, making it a welcome part of a neighborhood or native terrain. And it dramatically increases your home's value. Landscaping also makes your house and yard more useful and better able to complement your family's lifestyle. Trees shade your home to reduce energy use. Thorny shrubs deter prowlers. Lawns reduce dust from bare ground and give children the perfect play area. Patios and decks are great for entertaining. And a vegetable garden can yield fresh, delicious salads to eat on that patio or deck.

Landscaping for Dummies has everything you need to turn the little patch of earth you call your own into a personal paradise. Whether you've waited for the day to have property to landscape, you'd never given it a second thought until you had to, or you want to improve on an existing landscape, this book offers a clearly written wealth of knowledge on:

Designs Fences, walls, gates, and paths Decks, patios, and outdoor rooms Trees Shrubs and vines Ground cover

From the basic principles of landscape design, to all the ins and outs of hillsides, balcony gardens, and water gardens, this book will show you how to:

Think like a designer Dream up the right landscape for your family's needs Increase your home's resale value Conserve energy Deal with contractors, nurseries, and hardware suppliers Create an edible landscape

Full of helpful problem-solvers for all kinds of landscapes, Landscaping for Dummies also features sample plans, "theme" landscape ideas, and a brilliant color photo section to inspire the imagination. Accessible and informative to both beginner and expert landscapers, this is the complete guide to creating the yard you've always wanted.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764551280
• ISBN13: 9780764551284
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great for the price.

This book will give you a basic understanding on what and where to place plants and flowers as well as an idea what is the best grass for the kind of weather in your area. It breaks things down to plain english and provides step by step procedures on landscaping.

Okay for the basic landscaper

I've been working in commercial landscaping off and on for nearly four years now. I borrowed this book from a friend just to check it out. I think if you are a new homeowner and don't have much experience in landscaping then this book will probably work. If you are familiar with planting tree's and shrubs, bricklaying, fencing, and bordering, then maybe you should try and find something a little more advance. I suppose it depends on how big the project is you are working on.