Creating a New Garden

The Whitens, British garden designers and writers, purport to offer advice to new homeowners on ""the creation of a beautiful garden with a sense of purpose.'' Unfortunately, their few good suggestions are buried beneath a ton of verbiage and banalities (``trees cast pleasant shade''). Assuming that the average new homeowner has a green thumb, the Whitens focus on theories of gardening rather than actual tips. The most helpful chapterson breaking large yards into manageable plotsare marred by confusing diagrams. The lovely color photographs of gardenssome designed by the Whitenswould intimidate a novice gardener (one garden features a river with a charmingly weathered boat; another has a pool with ``superbly coloured and patterned Koi carp''). Geared to the English reader, the book includes several mysterious Briticisms. A map of ``Hardiness Zones of North America,'' seemingly a sop to U.S. and Canadian readers, is a hodgepodge of wavy lines and code numbers. Ultimately, the book lacks ``the sense of purpose'' that the Whitens declare essential to a successful garden. (August 25)