[.ca] Lawn Care For Dummies (ISBN 0764550772)

From Amazon.com:
If your neighbors' lawn always resembles a beautiful green carpet while yours looks like something that would cost Tiger Woods several shots, you could use some practical help. Trust the Dummies folks--you really can have a great lawn without breaking your back every weekend, spending a fortune on sod, or poisoning your pets. Lawn Care for Dummies takes you through all the steps: choosing the right grass, planting the seed or laying the sod, installing an irrigation system, fertilizing, aerating, watering, and mowing. It also helps you avoid (or conquer) the Big Three: weeds, pests, and disease. Finally, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--you get to enjoy your lawn! In the spirit of all Dummies books, there's a list of 10 lawn games at the end. Bocce, anyone?

Very good book for starting a lawn:
I planted my first lawn from scratch this Spring, and spent a lot of time reading and re-reading this book. The advice the book gave was great, particularly when it came to selecting the type of grass to plant for my particular needs and in my area. The other reviewers are correct about the photos being not very useful, but they certainly are pretty! However, I found the author's descriptions of grass types to be very clear and putting pictures of grass types would have been redundant. There were a few things that could have used more coverage, though. In particular, the description of the various options in boundaries and edgings was difficult to follow with very few pictures. Plus, the section on sprinklers touched on only about half of the types of sprinklers offered by my local garden center. My neighbor across the street planted his lawn at the same time I did mine, but without the book. He's a nice guy, but his lawn is a joke! Maybe I'll loan him my book this Fall when he starts over....

Ok but not great:
The few color pictures are pointless. There is some good information, but the section on revitalizing your lawn is too small. I was looking for a general reference, but they say to aerate but never mention when you should do this (I have read this in other books) and they don't mention other techniques that I have read other places. This book would be pretty good for someone starting from scratch. If you just want to improve your lawn, buy another book.

Lots of Good Advice, But Wasted Photos:
This book is an excellent reference on everything you would want to know on how to start, repair or maintain a lawn, but it doesn't answer some really, really basic questions, like "What kind of grass do I have?" The photos are just fluff, and could have been better used to identify grass types, weeds or lawn problems.

Great beginning view of lawn possibilities.:
Having never had a lawn before, I needed a very basic, gentle introduction to what it means to have and care for a lawn - and this book delivers just that. It also covers topics I might not have thought about ahead of time, including lawn disease and alternate ground covers. The ambient sense of humor makes what could appear to be a very intimidating project seem more like fun than work. My only objection - the color photos are wasted on shots of random lawns. I would have preferred to see these photos used to show examples that are best viewed, rather than textually described... such as grass types, insect & disease damage, weeds, etc. Overall, this book has given me a great overview of my entire lawn project, and I can't wait to get started.