Review of : Beginner's Guide to Garden Planning and Design: 50 Simple Gardening Ideas for Adding Style & Personality to Your Outdoor Space (Creative Homeowner) Sustainable Gardening, Using Containers, and More Helen Yoest

 Get all the inspiration you need to plan and design your first garden! Gardeners are generally always looking for inspiration. In the forward this helpful gardening book, P. Allen Smith states, "Helen has outlined 50 ways to add style to express one's personal creativity in the garden — when in fact her 50 will inspire at least 50 more ideas." Rather than force her own creative ideas on you, author, gardener, and horticulturalist Helen Yoest teaches you to recognize and act on your own creativity! Inside this book, easy-to-follow sections are divided into four basic priorities to consider when thinking about your Garden Basics, Garden Styles, Garden Elements, and Your Garden Environment. Chapters include how to create rhythm, scale, and balance along with curb appeal to shape your owns ideas, plus a chapter on creating a sustainable garden environment where plants and animals can live together. You'll also learn about the importance of selecting the perfect space and sketching out your plan first, how to use containers effectively, how to think about fragrance in your garden, and how to incorporate other features including water, walkways, and walls. Let your imagination go wild and create an amazing space that will give back season after season, with Planning & Designing Your First Garden ! "Helen isn't interested in impressing readers with how much she knows. Rather she's concerned with readers impressing themselves with how much they can accomplish once they believe they can."

Are you looking to bring flowers and plants into your garden but don't know where to start? Well, this book would be a great place to start.

I've read all types of garden books and even taken Master Gardners classes and I still learned a few new things in this book I loved how the author covered sounds. Not many garden books cover garden sounds and believe me the more native plants you bring in the more birds, bees, and other wildlife sounds you have in your garden, it beats traffic noise any day. A simple bird splashing in the bird bath is one of the most simple sounds that brings gardens to life.

This book covers a bit of everything even vegetable garden and has wonderful pictures that will get your creative juices going.