Rodale's Weekend Gardener: Create a Low-Maintenance Landscape to Enjoy Year-Round

A guide proposing attractive projects for the more casual gardener helps readers enjoy their property without hours of back-breaking work and includes an encyclopedia of low-maintenance plants, plant tips, and color photographs of weekend gardens.

Can home owners create an interesting, satisfying landscape without the support of an army of gardening help and while maintaining a life outside their garden? The answer from Hynes, coauthor of Great Garden Shortcuts (1996), who admits to spending most of her days "earning a living, raising a child, doing volunteer work," is an unequivocal yes. After enumerating the most energy-intensive gardening chores, she suggests solutions for minimizing such tasks as watering, mowing, weeding and fertilizing. Hynes also urges readers to lighten their workload in the section "Picking Unpicky Plants." Her comprehensively annoted list of such plants includes annual, perennial and biennial flowers, ground covers, grasses, trees and shrubs, and some of the less demanding varieties of vegetables. No aspect of gardening is too insignificant for her attention, as in the reminder that mowing a lawn next to a perennial border is easier if the flower bed has curved rather than straight edges. Also included are plans for such weekend building projects as planters and window boxes, trellises, compost bins, walkways and patios. Hynes's chatty, personable prose adds stylistic appeal to her sound and practical advice.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hynes (Improving the Boil, Rodale, 1994) gives us a straightforward book geared especially for homeowners long on gardening enthusiasm but short on time and resources. The author begins by taking the weekend gardener through the planning stage without the demands of exacting grid drawings. In addition, Hynes gives readers enough gardening essentials for a basic understanding of soil, sod, tools, plant nutrition and care, and disease and pest control. A "Weekend Gardener's Encyclopedia," including descriptions of the easiest plants to grow as well as a chapter on simple and useful construction projects, is included. The author's easygoing, reassuring writing style and the excellent color photographs make this book an ideal purchase for beginner and intermediate gardeners. Recommended for all public and horticultural libraries.?Art Wolk, Camden Cty. Lib., Winslow Twshp., NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hynes divides the book into four sections. The first, "Creating Your Weekend Garden," advises readers on planning a yard and garden that fit their time budget. The second, "Making the Least of Garden Care," explains how to install a lawn and garden, then how to save time and effort caring for them. The third, "Picking Unpicky Plants," is a weekend gardener's encyclopedia of 100 vegetables, herbs, annuals, perennials, biennials, bulbs, trees, shrubs, and ornamental grasses. Each entry gives information on planting, growing, and harvesting, and on pests and diseases. The fourth, "Easy Projects for the Weekend Gardener," includes such projects as building planters, window boxes, a trellis, a walk, a patio, and compost bins. All this is not as "easy" as the author would have one believe, but there is a lot of useful information here, along with 200 color photographs. George Cohen