Family Handyman: Landscape Projects (ISBN 0762103884)

For the Home Landscaper:
The variety of landscaping projects in this book makes it a boon for the do-it-yourselfer. It thrilled me to find a section on building dry stone walls, right at the time I'd collected heaps of granite stones from my New Hampshire garden. I learned a lot about "v" slant, chinking wedge and capstones in just a few pages and it was a big help. Here's what the book covers: Lawn Care and Maintenance (Caring for Your Lawn, Restoring a Lawn, Laying Sod, Alternatives to Grass) Beautiful Gardens (Planting Flowering Bulbs, Planting Roses, Creating a Water Garden, Container Gardening, Growing Ground Covers, Drip Watering System) Trees, Shrubs, and Hedges (Planting Trees, Pruning Trees, Planting a Hedge, Foundation Plantings, Mulching Your Garden) Walks and Walls (Laying a Flagstone Footpath, Brick Accents for Walkways, Building Landscaping Walls, Building Dry Stone Walls, Building a Timber Retaining Wall) Garden Structures (A Garden Arbor, A Post-and-Beam Pavilion, A Graceful Wooden Bridge, A Domed Gazebo) You can count on Reader's Digest for a quality book (good illustrations & to-the-point text). In some cases you will want to get a whole book on a topic like creating a water garden. This gets you started.