Designing Your Gardens and Landscapes: 12 Simple Steps for Successful Planning

In Designing Your Garden and Landscapes, Janet Macunovich lays out a simple 12-step plan that can enable you to design the perfect garden space while eliminating the guesswork. If you're a first-time gardener or a novice, chances are you'll find her sensible approach useful. The book was created as a how-to manual and workbook, so many pages leave space for priority lists or diagrams, and the plastic ring binder means it holds up to plenty of wear.

Macunovich begins by focusing on the importance of setting goals. Why do you want a garden? How will you be using it? What are your favorite plants? This process takes time and compromise, and provides the perfect beginning for moving on to the next steps: setting a budget and planning for maintenance. Once these basics are decided, the real fun begins--the actual design. Important subjects such as site assessment, plant selection, and border mapping are given thorough attention. Macunovich also does new growers a service by decoding plant-marketing comments. For instance, "does well in dry soils" can translate to both tolerating drought and rotting if overwatered, depending on your perspective. By the time you've finished these 12 steps, you'll have all the information you need to design a smart garden space. --Jill Lightner