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The New Low-Maintenance Garden: How to Have a Beautiful, Productive Garden and the Time to Enjoy It |  | Author: Valerie Easton
Creator: Jacqueline M. Koch
Publisher: Timber Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy Used: $9.41
as of 7/29/2010 18:15 PDT details
You Save: $10.54 (53%)
New (29) Used (12) from $9.41
Seller: Goodwill BookWorks
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 11047
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 284
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 8 x 0.9
ISBN: 1604691662
Dewey Decimal Number: 635
EAN: 9781604691665
ASIN: 1604691662
Publication Date: November 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Do you ever lament that you’d love to be able to garden more, but just don’t have the time? The demanding pace of modern life leaves little space for the pleasures of gardening. On the other hand, gardening itself could be the culprit: elaborate, traditional perennial borders; water-hungry or disease-prone plants; needy lawns; and high-maintenance plants that require staking or clipping all suck up precious hours.
Simply put, we need to start gardening in a whole new way. In this inspiring book, Val Easton shows exactly how to have a low-maintenance garden that doesn't sacrifice style. You won't have to give up your favorite plants or settle for expanses of ugly bark nuggets. You just have to unlearn some bad old habits and pick up some good new ones.
So, how do you go about making a "new" low-maintenance garden? First, design your garden with maintenance in mind—good-looking hardscape will both save weeding time and showcase your favorite plants. Second, simplify your garden routines—learn the most efficient planting and maintenance techniques and don't get stressed if everything isn't letter-perfect. Third, learn how to work with nature rather than against it. And finally, embrace home-grown fruits, herbs, and vegetables; well planted containers; and thoughtfully chosen plants.
The New Low-Maintenance Garden doesn't just tell you how to garden in a whole new way—it shows you, through profiles and beautiful photographs of real gardens that embody low-maintenance techniques.
The pressures of life are not likely to ease up anytime soon, but the lessons of this timely book will help you banish guilt over undone garden chores and revel in your garden successes.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Great ideas! November 17, 2009
treehugger22 (Newtown Square, PA United States)
28 out of 34 found this review helpful
I have a large, intensely gardened yard and have been looking for ideas of how to landscape the parts of the yard that I haven't yet gotten to in a way that would be lower maintenance. This book has lots of good ideas, photos, plant lists and tips to help. Highly recommended!
Taking the hardwork out of your 'Jardiniere'+ February 11, 2010
Magickal Merlin (Death Valley-SoCal)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a awesome book on personalising your own garden space.At first, I thought this was going to be a boring book about vegetable gardening.Not at all,what I thought it would be.This is a very insightful gardening book,about getting the most out of your garden,by using less.There are a lot of great gardening books around.This one also enters into the art of decorating and designing your ideal garden landscape.Your garden is your shrine and your peaceful retreat.Your garden is give and take.You reap what you sow into your sacred garden.The book was so enlightening on various ways of connecting with Nature ,without leaving your backyard.Gardens are more important now then ever.They add depth to one's character ,a sense of communion with nature and improves the happiness of others.This gardening book helps the reader work with nature,rather than pushing against the natural flow of the surrounding elements.
Not the only gardening book you need, but an excellent addition to a gardening library May 20, 2010
Gen of North Coast Gardening (California)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
You'd think that a landscape designer who also does landscape maintenance would be dismissive of the whole low-maintenance gardening thing. After all, there's a negative impression of low-maintenance gardens as being dull, static, lifeless places devoid of wildlife or any personal character.
But there is a balance in a well-designed garden between hardscape (the patios, walkways, raised beds, and other permanent structures), the shrubs and trees that require little care beyond formative pruning and appropriate watering, and the flowers, grasses, veggies and bulbs that invite your personality to shine yet do require more care to keep up.
Finding that perfect balance is what this book is all about, so when Timber Press sent me a copy to review, I was excited to dig in. This book is an inspiring manifesto that introduces you to gardeners who have found that balance between caring for their garden, and having time to just enjoy their garden.
It's not about skipping out on maintenance altogether, because many of the gardens featured have flowering plants, veggies and container gardens that do require care.
It is about figuring out what really touches your soul in a garden, and thinking carefully about how to edit your "must-haves" down to a few key elements. The end result is a garden that feels lush and bold, yet requires less time to care for and focuses your attention only on the more enjoyable tasks in gardening.
Some of her advice for creating the new style of low-maintenance garden:
* Keep it small: a small garden requires less time and resources to care for.
* Most of the garden is not actually planted in the ground, to avoid weeding. Pavers, gravel laid over landscape fabric, or other usable entertaining areas take the place of lawn, and planting is done in raised beds, troughs or large containers to avoid weeding areas of ground that don't need to be planted.
* Take good care of your soil and use ample amounts of mulch to help plants be less dependant on you.
* Use drip irrigation systems to free you from the endless chore of hand-watering.
* Use screening to create small, manageable spaces that you can design carefully and maintain with ease. In the screened-off areas of the garden you can place garden sheds, compost bins, and out-of-season planting containers or chairs.
* Use the screening you create as vertical gardening space to pack more plants and interest into a small area.
* Carefully edit your plant list to make sure every plant is attractive in multiple seasons and doesn't need spraying or dividing. Rely heavily on plants that provide year-round foliage interest, and use flowers strategically in places where you'll really notice them.
These are just a few of the basic concepts presented.
Easton then takes us on a garden tour, profiling a number of differently-styled gardens. She talks with the gardeners who created these personal, beautiful spaces to learn how they developed their garden plan, what was important to them in creating and changing their garden, and how they use the garden now.
Throughout each section, Easton gives tips on how to use groundcovers effectively, avoid invasive plants that can turn into a maintenance nightmare, or get rid of weeds organically. The tips are practical and focused, and if you're anything like me, you'll have a number of bookmarks through the book by the time you're done reading.
One thing to note is that many of the gardens incorporate elements that are decidedly not low-maintenance, such as a large plantings of annual Impatiens, or annual vegetables that need refreshing throughout the year. But this is consistent with her philosophy that garden maintenance be about figuring out your priorities and editing down to just the most important elements.
It's not about no-maintenance, it's about choosing the type and amount of maintenance that works for you and gets you the results you most desire in your garden.
The author also discusses using container plants as a way of reducing maintenance. She points out that if you use drip irrigation and create permanent container plantings of shrubs and trees, container plantings can be a low-maintenance way of avoiding the bending and weeding of gardening in the ground. Container plants do need to be repotted periodically in order to thrive (which can be an intimidating task!), but I agree with her point that the bold look of containers can reduce the number of plantings needed to create a lush, green environment.
If I have one quibble with the book, it is that some of the photos of container plants she features have plantings that are gorgeous, but unrealistically crammed with plants that will outgrow their pots and overwhelm the things they are growing with. I worry that new gardeners won't understand that this is inspirational eye candy and not the good long-term planting practice she advises in her text.
For me, the strength of this book was in the incredible variety of styles used and the people profiled. Seeing so many different kinds of garden allowed me to take some ideas or philosophies from each place, and get a better idea of what I might like in my own home garden. I'm also excited to be able to bring this book along when meeting clients, to show them some of the possibilities for a low-maintenance space.
The photos by Jacqueline H. Koch were gorgeous - a perfect match with Easton's writing. They helped me get a real vision and feeling for what this style of gardening might look like. It was great to be able to take direct inspiration from the plant and material combinations used in the book.
Overall, this book provides a whole new philosophy for gardening that will guide you in designing (or re-designing) your outdoor spaces. The photos are stunning and varied, and you are sure to find a number of ideas that inspire you and make you think of your own garden differently.
In addition, the tips are practical, environmentally friendly, and geared towards having a garden that enriches your life and gives you and your family a place to appreciate nature and each other. It's gardening for today's gardeners - busy people who want to balance gardening with the other aspects of their lives.
Excellent Info and Easy Read February 14, 2010
T. J. Hudak (Madison, GA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are many books on this subject and I own a lot of them. I decided on this one because of the word "new" in the title; curious to know how we can do low maintenance differently. I was not disappointed. The information is presented in an easy to read format that describes gardens around the country with different zones and varied concepts. Each story is accompanied by good pictures to further explain and to inspire. Depending on the needs of the garden owners, the story may focus on less plants/more hardscape or more foliage/less flowers; but each story explains how that garden was successful. At the end of each section, the author sets out a great list of resources to further your education: books, videos, websites.
Throughout the chapters there are recommendations on how to incorporate sustainable aspects in your garden; how to attract wildlife; how to enjoy your garden without spending hours working in it. The format is great. You can view just the pictures and associated text and learn a lot; the main text is divided by gardens so it is easy to flip around if you want to read about your type; and the writing is well written and informative--specific plants are recommended in each topic to help with pulling together the "look". This is one of the best garden books I've purchased to date -- it has inspired me to complete my one acre garden -- believing that it can be maintained without hours of daily work.
Excellent! June 2, 2010
Chapala (Edmonds, WA)
As a long-time gardener moving to a new home and nearly blank slate of a garden, this book was fabulously helpful in designing my new garden to be much easier to maintain than all the others I've had. She spoke exactly to my situation of wanting to simplify while still being able to enjoy the beauty of a garden. With all the specific examples, many photographs and ideas, I found the book to be full of useful information that brings me back again and again, especially when I'm inclined to stray towards the over-complicated garden. I am so happy with the start of my new garden, and have the author to thank for much of the inspiration!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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