cover image Your First Garden: A Landscape Primer for New Home Owners

Your First Garden: A Landscape Primer for New Home Owners

Judith Adam. Firefly, $19.95 trade paper (120p) ISBN 978-1-77085-708-7

Adam, a horticulturist, landscape designer, and author of Landscape Planning: Practical Techniques for the Home Gardener, offers a useful book of advice for new homeowners and others building their first gardens. The book initiates readers into the basics of designing, planning, planting, and maintaining a garden. Starting with a checklist for planning the garden, Adam includes an informative primer on fertilizers and essential tools. One section helps gardeners understand soil types and ways to improve soil quality. Perennials, shrubs, and trees are suggested to provide color through the seasons in North America. Hints on spotting diseased, neglected plants and other concerns are particularly useful when buying plants. The book is well organized and designed to allow the reader to find specific gardening topics quickly with thoughtfully designed diagrams, headers, sidebars and an index. Unfortunately, flora introduced in the book are not included in the index, making it difficult to retrace where particular plants were mentioned. Beautiful photographs and illustrations enhance the reading and learning experience. The author's advice will help beginners avoid costly mistakes, plan well, and tend to a thoughtfully designed garden that will add value to property and offer beauty for years to come. (Mar.)