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Do you ever lament that you’d love to be able to garden more, but just don’t have the time? The demanding pace of modern life leaves little space for the pleasures of gardening. On the other hand, gardening itself could be the culprit: elaborate, traditional perennial borders; water-hungry or disease-prone plants; needy lawns; and high-maintenance plants that require staking or clipping all suck up precious hours. Simply put, we need to start gardening in a whole new way. In this inspiring book, Val Easton shows exactly how to have a low-maintenance garden that doesn’t sacrifice style. You won’t have to give up your favorite plants or settle for expanses of ugly bark nuggets. You just have to unlearn some bad old habits and pick up some good new ones. So, how do you go about making a ‘new’ low-maintenance garden? First, design your garden with maintenance in mind – good-looking hardscape will both save weeding time and showcase your favorite plants. Second, simplify your garden routines – learn the most efficient planting and maintenance techniques and don’t get stressed if everything isn’t letter-perfect. Third, learn how to work with nature rather than against it. And finally, embrace home-grown fruits, herbs, and vegetables; well planted containers; and, thoughtfully chosen plants. “The New Low-Maintenance Garden” doesn’t just tell you how to garden in a whole new way – it shows you, through profiles and beautiful photographs of real gardens that embody low-maintenance techniques. The pressures of life are not likely to ease up anytime soon, but the lessons of this timely book will help you banish guilt over undone garden chores and revel in your garden successes.
Publisher : Timber Press; 1st edition (1 November 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 284 pages
ISBN-10 : 1604691662
ISBN-13 : 978-1604691665
Item Weight : 771 g
Dimensions : 20.47 x 1.91 x 23.01 cm
Country of Origin : India
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S. Hudak –
There are many books on this subject and I own a lot of them. I decided on this one because of the word “new” in the title; curious to know how we can do low maintenance differently. I was not disappointed. The information is presented in an easy to read format that describes gardens around the country with different zones and varied concepts. Each story is accompanied by good pictures to further explain and to inspire. Depending on the needs of the garden owners, the story may focus on less plants/more hardscape or more foliage/less flowers; but each story explains how that garden was successful. At the end of each section, the author sets out a great list of resources to further your education: books, videos, websites.Throughout the chapters there are recommendations on how to incorporate sustainable aspects in your garden; how to attract wildlife; how to enjoy your garden without spending hours working in it. The format is great. You can view just the pictures and associated text and learn a lot; the main text is divided by gardens so it is easy to flip around if you want to read about your type; and the writing is well written and informative–specific plants are recommended in each topic to help with pulling together the “look”. This is one of the best garden books I’ve purchased to date — it has inspired me to complete my one acre garden — believing that it can be maintained without hours of daily work.
Reviewer 77 –
The quality of the writing in this book is excellent, and it has a lot of helpful information and inspiring ideas and photos. Unfortunately, it is not a pleasure to use the book because of the lousy Chinese print job. I hope the authors are listening so they don’t ruin their next book.The font is TERRIBLE and makes reading difficult and irritating, something the reader is unable to forget during the entire reading experience. Therefore, reading is not a relaxing, enjoyable experience. I guess the publisher saved two cents by using a font so small, light, and annoyingly “delicate” that it uses less ink. You almost need a high-powered magnifying glass to read the photo captions.The photos are unpleasant to view and actually look much better on Amazon’s “Look Inside” viewing option. I’m not a pro photographer, so I don’t have the technical language, but I’ll try my best. The photos are dark, muddy, and are not crisp and clear, making it difficult to discern all objects in the photo. The pages have a “glare” to them, so the reader must constantly shift the book to attempt to see each entire photo. The paper has a weird, slightly “sandy” feel to it, which I believe has something to do with a coating that makes it difficult to see the photos.Finally, the printing on each page in the bound area starts and/or ends too close to the binding, again necessitating endless shifting of the book to read it. Or the reader could keep pressing hard on the binding to attempt to flatten the book to read it better, although this will quickly destroy the glued (not sewn) binding, causing the pages to fall out and the book to fall apart.Suggestion: Bring those printing jobs back home to the USA and do it right the next time. Let the Chinese spend more of their time killing us with melamine-laced human and pet food, and creating clothes with material so thin you’re embarrassed to wear them to the office and have to watch them fall apart after a few cleanings.
jgintx –
I was the gardener who would wander with a new plant purchase in hand, trying to figure out where to put it. Despite my love of plants and enjoyment of gardening, the large border garden in front of my house was scraggly in spots, overgrown in others, often weedy, and just plain incoherent. This book changed all that. It taught me to ruthlessly cull plants that were doing well but didn’t thrill me, along with those that weren’t flourishing, and those that were taking over, to create a well-edited garden that can be enjoyed in multiple ways.I first read the whole book not long after it was published and then revisited it in early spring for the next couple years. I just got it out again, thinking of a friend who is planning a yard renovation after retirement. On re-reading the first couple of chapters I realize just how much I absorbed from this book and how helpful it’s been.Some reviewers complain that the book doesn’t give plant recommendations for their areas or that the style of gardens in the book doesn’t suit them. I see this book as providing a very practical foundation for the layman. There are many good books on garden style and plant selection. My garden is a mostly native xeriscape, and I used the books “The American Meadow Garden” by Greenlee, “Plant-Driven Design” by Ogden & Ogden, and a couple plant reference books for my state for style inspiration and plant information. But I could not have done it without The New Low-Maintenance Garden.
KickingSixtyChick –
Although my husband is an avid gardener, he has been quite frustrated since we moved to Southern New Mexico, having to learn to cope with not just the heat and dry conditions, but also “high” desert (above 4000 feet) growing conditions. Having grown up in California where you can grow everything it seems, then moving to the mountains of Oregon and the foothills of the Colorado Rockies where limited to some things he could still grow fantastic gardens every spring thru fall, he was finding himself extremely upset every summer when the weather really turned HOT and DRY in our new home. This book was a fantastic find as it helped immensely in finding plants that could tolerate the extremes in our weather (we also have to contend with freezing temperatures in the winter). Although written for those who want a beautiful yard and garden but not the work that often goes with it, it still has tons of information that is great to know. A definite needed reference book for all gardeners.
Jess C. –
I recently moved to a house with a giant yard. Beyond planting a few annuals every year and growing container vegetables, I have very little gardening experience, so I hoped this book would provide some good ideas about how to start transforming my featureless expanse of grass into something that looked pretty good without too much continuous effort on my part.Unfortunately, this book wasn’t really helpful to me. Right from the introduction, the author assumes her audience are people who have previously spent way too much time intensively planting and maintaining formal gardens. She urges the reader to perhaps relax a little and let the lettuce bolt, and casually mentions things like sedums and sedges. Having no idea what bolting, sedums, or sedges were, the advice left me feeling overwhelmed, but I imagine that a more experienced gardener might benefit from the ideas in the book. At least there was a nice list of suggested low-maintenance plants in the back… but no pictures of them!There were some contradictions, as well: in the first few pages, it clearly stated that “cottage gardens” were outdated, and yet many of the examples appeared to be (and were even described as) exactly cottage gardens. Also, parts of the book stress using drought-tolerant native plants, while showing gardens that are dependent on irrigation systems.Basically, the book features a lot of beautiful, mature, complete gardens planted by professional designers. Gorgeous to look at, but didn’t really give a good idea of where to start transforming my own yard. It also tended to focus on making the most of small spaces, which wasn’t really helpful in my situation.