Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75378 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764551284
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Library Journal
This guide is intended as a basic reference for those who want to improve their landscape. Beginning with a Wish List, the authors help gardeners achieve the yard of their dreams. Each step of the process is explained: designing a layout, building "hardscape" (paths, fences, arbors), selecting plants and trees, choosing a contractor or deciding to do the work yourself. Icons are used to point out important information. Many illustrations, checklists, a hardiness zone table, plant lists, lists of mail-order suppliers, 16 professional landscape designs, recommended readings, and online resources provide inspiration. The tone of the book is upbeat and humorous. Recommended for public libraries. (Color photographs not seen.)ANancy Lee Myers, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"I was amazed at its comprehensiveness and thoroughness--you can tell that the authors really have done this stuff before." -- About.com

From the Back Cover
Praise for Landscaping For Dummies® "Exceptionally complete…. A reference that will make both dummies and seasoned landscape practitioners much better at what they do…. A superlative job" — Joel M. Lerner, Washington Post "A lot of good, basic information…. This book will help you understand what a professional might do, from design to construction." — Nick Harder, Orange County Register

Includes color photos and professional landscape plans

Turn your yard into a beautiful outdoor room Even if you don't know a perennial from a pergola, you can transform your yard into a picture-perfect landscape that's the envy of the neighborhood. This friendly illustrated guide walks you step-by-step through the entire process, from evaluating your needs and designing a plan to selecting plants and getting the work done.

Customer Reviews

Wasting money for dummies - buy this book from me
You are just as likely to need the assistance of the above referenced title as you are to gain information from this book. It could be re-titled: "Gardening for Dummies" and possibly pass muster as a helpful guide. For landscaping - save your money and invest it in plantings. Most of the text is dedicated to construction projects (decks etc.) what plants are good for what purpose (height, width), and the value of good landscaping. Unfortunately the text discussing HOW to landscape effectively is breezed through with only the briefest nod to the MOST elemental concepts. A (with liberties taken) paraphrase," You will need dirt. Dirt is available at garden centers. Plants will not grow without it, so make sure you have some before you attempt to establish your plants." For any but the most significantly stupid, this book is useless for the purpose it alleges to serve. I would have given it a "0" star rating, but that isn't an option.

Only an overview
I found the book to be useful in terms of providing some overall ideas for what can be done to a landscape, but useless in terms of actually getting down to the business of landscaping.

For instance, the section about grass types lists 8 different grasses for my region, which is nice, but it doesn't give you any real way to compare and contrast those 8 types to choose which one you want. For some grasses it tells you if they are seed or sod, but it doesn't give that info for all the grasses. Same thing for shade or sun, disease resistance, etc... In the end I had to go to other sources to figure out which type of grass I wanted in my yard.

Same thing happened when picking shrubs. Pictures of different shrub types would have been helpful, but instead there were just basic descriptions that were hard to compare and contrast among the shrub types.

This book is very general and not that useful for people who are actually ready to start landscaping and need help making the decisions about what will go into their yard. I was pretty disapointed because I've had great luck with other For Dummies books.

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.