Step-by-Step Landscaping (2nd Edition) (Better Homes and Gardens Gardening)

This wonderful book truly inspires gardeners and do-it-yourself landscapers. It is full of unusual, exciting, and achievable ideas for lawns, beds, pools, pavings, and more. The acknowledgements say that the wealth of photos and plans were submitted by many designers and the selected by Better Homes and Garden. Perhaps that partly explains the enormous variety of ideas in this book, but anyone familiar with Better Home and Garden book will not be surprised to find so many kinds of beautiful ideas for designing outdoor spaces.A few of the great design ideas in the book are things that I have heard of before—like the importance of focal points—but many others are new, tremendously helpful concepts to me, like the advisability of dividing your space into zones. I also love the way the design ideas cover a wide spectrum, from a dramatically unusual meditative labyrinth of sedum, riverstone, and raked earth to more traditional treatments of gates, walls, fences, etc.The before and after pictures of the DIY backyard would inspire anyone, and I also particularly love the ideas for side yards, garages, and driveways, the “green ideas that work,” and above all, the way this book suggests things that I can actually achieve—building, creating, and maintaining my landscape on my own.And now I’m totally inspired to have chickens for pest control! We can have them in the city I live in an older 1950's subdivision so I will also enjoy fresh eggs. If you found this review helpful please like. Thank you

This book was just when I was looking for but I didn’t want to pay full Price for it. I bought a used edition at an extremely reasonable rate and the book is practically brand new. There are so many ideas what I can do with my landscaping and it is a perfect booked for the beginner!

Having very little gardening or landscaping experience, I found this book to be a good introduction to the topic. It doesn't go into crazy levels of detail on any particular subject, but instead gives you a good overview of what's possible. It stresses planning, explains the importance of practical things like grading and observing the patterns of sunlight year-round, and gives you an idea of how much work is involved in things like building a deck or retaining wall or pond (helpful in deciding whether to DIY or hire a professional).There's probably not much new in here for experienced gardeners, but as a complete beginner, I now have some ideas about how to start planning the yard, and what subjects I should read about more in depth.

I'm always looking for new ideas for my yard. I almost didn't order this book based on some of the reviews that I had read. Very glad that I ignored them. This book has information from A to Z on planning up through maintaining your personalized space. This time I was looking for ideas for a grapevine arbor and this book had an interesting idea for grapevines that I would have never thought of. Then as I continued to flip through the book I found another idea for the grapevine that was even more appealing, especially if I blend the 2 ideas together. And the more I looked I found other ideas that with some modification will look fantastic in my yard. I can already tell that this book is going to be used many times because of the information contained within it.

This book has a lot of ideas, but they did not fit what I was looking for. I guess it takes a lot of effort and money to do a project right. I wasn't really looking for a park in my yard.

Great photos and step by step "how to" information.

I rate this used book A+. It's used but it looks and feels new. Good value. We will be building a retaining/drainage wall in our yard and this book was what we needed to read first. Glad I took a chance on buying it used.

It is an in teresting book with very good ideas easy to do. Actually is one of the best books I have bought about making a good garden. There is a lot of plans well explained with the real photo. There are also make yourself suggestions and plants for different situations. In my opinion it is a good shopping. I would recommeded it to my friends!