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.

The New Gardener's Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Grow a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden by Daryl Beyers

Title: The New Gardener's Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Grow a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden 

Author: Daryl Beyers

Source: Netgalley

Genre: Gardening

Rating: 5 

“Gardeners just starting out will earn a sense of accomplishment and a good dose of knowledge.” —Booklist

Every new gardener has to start somewhere—and the process can be intimidating. Knowing when and what to plant, how to care for the plants once they’re in the ground, and how to keep pests and diseases away is a lot to take on. Luckily, Daryl Beyers—an expert from the New York Botanical Garden—has written what will be a  go-to resource for decades to come. The New Gardener’s Handbook is a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of gardening, based on the introductory gardening class that Beyers teaches at NYBG. Readers will learn about soil, plant selection, propagation, planting and mulching, watering and feeding, pruning, and weeds, pests, and diseases. The information applies to both ornamental and edible plants. Featuring inspiring photography and helpful illustrations, The New Gardener’s Handbook gives home gardeners a foundation upon which they can grow, and encourages them to apply the lessons they’ve learned in an intuitive, natural way.

This book is a must for any new gardener!

I really enjoyed the detail the author went into for this book, he covered everything including trees. I wished I had this book years ago when I first started out; it would have made things a lot simpler for me.  

This book covers everything from soil, growing plants, pruning plants, to pest control. Easy to understand and I love the images and graphs included.

I consider myself an intermediate gardener, I have raised garden beds, fruit trees and lots of flowers to help bring in pollinators and after reading this book I have found help for some simple solutions I have desperately needed so, even if you consider yourself an intermediate gardener this book might help you advance even more.

Field Guide to Urban Gardening: How to Grow Plants, No Matter Where You Live: Raised Beds - Vertical Gardening - Indoor Edibles - Balconies and Rooftops - Hydroponics by Kevin Espiritu

Title: Field Guide to Urban Gardening: How to Grow Plants, No Matter Where You Live: Raised Beds - Vertical Gardening - Indoor Edibles - Balconies and Rooftops - Hydroponics 
Author:  Kevin Espiritu
Genre: Gardening 
Source: Netgalley
Reviewed by Laurie
Rating: 5

In Field Guide to Urban Gardening, author Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening shares the basics of growing plants, offers tips on how to choose the right urban gardening method, and troubleshoots the most common problems you’ll encounter.

If you think it’s impossible to grow your own food because you don’t have a large yard or you live in the city…think again. There is a plethora of urban gardening options to create beautiful, productive edible gardens no matter where you live. The key to succeeding as an urban gardener is to choose the method(s) that make sense for your unique living situation and then give your plants what they need to thrive. Kevin helps you do just that.

But he doesn’t stop there. He also provides in-depth garden plans, from upcycled DIY projects and intensive hydroponic systems to beautiful and functional raised beds. Urban gardening is a real, growing, and important movement in today’s world. This fact-packed book is your roadmap to get growing today.

Urban gardening techniques featured include:
Container Gardening
Raised Beds
Indoor Edibles
Balconies and Rooftops
Hydroponics

No matter how small your space is you can always find ways to have an urban garden. I have resided beds and containers so I had to see if this book could help me advance more into smaller spaces since my husband always complains about mowing around my gardens. LOL

This book is very detailed and will help you get into the new age of urban gardening, it’s so much better to know where your food is coming from and gardening in any form can help relieve stress. You get great images along with detailed information that will walk you through step by step and if you look up the author he also has a website with tons of information that will help you.

I highly recommend this to anyone that is new or advance gardening.

Review for Growing Winter Food: How to grow, harvest, store, and use produce for the winter months by Linda Gray

Title: Growing Winter Food: How to grow, harvest, store, and use produce for the winter months
Author:  Linda Gray
Genre: Garden
Source: Netgalley
Reviewed by: Laurie
 Rating: 4

Grow Healthy Winter Produce

Grow your own keeper crops for the chilly days of winter—and you'll be sure of putting the freshest, tastiest produce, packed with goodness, on your kitchen table! Growing Winter Food is the essential gardening guide for those who want to enjoy their garden's output all year round. This easy-to-follow book shows you how to grow your own fruit and vegetables for winter use and includes detailed cultivation advice on each crop, along with nutritional value, recipe ideas, and storage suggestions.



Inside Growing Winter Food

• How to choose crops that you can grow and preserve so you’ll have fresh vegetables over the winter.

• Practical information and growing advice for all the most commonly grown winter foods: roots, legumes, green vegetables, herbs and fruits.

• Easy-to-follow instructions for sowing, maintenance, harvesting, and general gardening techniques.

• All the basic techniques you need to know, from preparing soil to using cloches and containers to dealing with pests and diseases.

• Handy plant profiles cover how to grow, plant, care for, save seeds, harvest, and preserve.

• Perfect for those with limited gardening experience, with gardens big or small.

Although some may see this title as a bit misleading if you keep reading you find this book is based on how to grow food and the best methods of storing for winter for your eating enjoyment.

This a book is not only a great reference garden books with lots of helpful tips, but you’ll also find recipes, storing, nutrients, care and maintenance, harvesting and transplanting for each individual vegetable.  I really liked the nutrients, care and maintenance sections, they were all explained very well.

I recommend this book for any level gardeners

Gardening book review of Starting & Saving Seeds: Grow the Perfect Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers for Your Garden by Julie Thompson-Adolf (Goodreads Author)

Title: Grow the Perfect Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers for Your Garden 

Author: Julie Thompson-Adolf 

Genre: Gardening 

Source: NetGalley

Reviewed by: Laurie 

Rating: 5

Grow fabulous food and flowers from seeds, then save seeds to make next year's garden even better.

Creating dinner from food you’ve grown provides a fantastic sense of accomplishment. Now, imagine the pleasure of starting plants from seeds, tending them, planting them in your garden, harvesting their fruits, and enjoying a delicious meal or bouquet. But that's not the end of the journey. Now you can turn around and save the best seeds for next year’s garden. Suddenly, you’re self-sufficient; you’ve grown your own garden from seed to seed.

In this book, you'll find the tools you need to become a seed starting and saving champion. Author and gardening expert Julie Thompson-Adolf walks you through every step of the journey, making the entire process a joy. You’ll find hints to encourage stubborn seeds to germinate, lists of varieties to add to your garden, charts for quick growing reference, and simple DIY projects to aid your seed starting and saving adventure. (Learn how to make seed bombs and an indoor seed-starting station.) The extensive plant entries inside cover all the most popular vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. Get started with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and melons, or chamomile, cosmos, sweet peas, and poppies—accompanied by beautiful photography from Libby Williams.

Whether you’re an experienced gardener new to seed starting and saving or a brand-new grower, you’ll soon have healthy, productive, beautiful plants for your garden.

Awesome reference from starting seeds to saving seeds book, I for one will be buying this book for my future gardening journey.

When I put in a request for this book I didn’t expect to get approval being a romance book blog but when I see the book in my Netgalley shelf I jumped for joy and I was not disappointed.

I started raised beds for my vegetables a few years back and had figured out how to save several seeds myself and have been pleased with my progress, but as I bring in new vegetables there are some I have no clue how to save the seeds so, I need some kind of reference or help to figure out how I save seeds for them plus, this year I expanded my gardening and bought over 300.00 dollars worth of flowers this summer so I knew I had to do something to save the seeds because I refuse to spend that kind of money each year. So, when I saw this book on Netgalley you know how happy I was to see it on my approved shelf.

Now, for the book review, I really loved how the author starts with simple sowing technique and brings you to save the seeds. No, she does not go into each plant on how to save the seed of that plant but she gives you both methods and she lists the way to save the seeds in each plant reference in the back of the book.

I’ve been direct sowing my seeds because my indoor seeds were a flop the first year, so I am hoping the simple tips will help me try indoor sowing again and succeeded next spring.   

This is a great book for any gardener to have on their shelf.