Gardening for Dummies (ISBN 0764551302)

Amazon.com Review:
Starting off with ultrabasics, like "how do I get my plants to live rather than die?" Gardening for Dummies is a terrific textbook for the novice gardener. Explanations are laid out simply, and all terms are defined as soon as they are first used--if you've never grown so much as a houseplant, this is the book to get you started. Emphasis is on choosing proper plants for your zone (it's OK--the color map will show you which zone you're in) that are fairly low-maintenance and high-success. Large sections on both seeds and bedding plants will give you lots of options and specific instructions for getting good results--seeds, especially, are treated as persnickety little critters that require some extra effort in exchange for low cost and large variety. The big downside to this book is its lack of pictures. There are lots of line drawings, but they tend to show particular stages of a process, rather than each step. Color photos are limited to two sections, and most of them are close-ups of various plants. While it's nice to see what the bark of a paperbark maple looks like, it doesn't particularly add to the value of the book. For folks who learn best with straightforward reading, the sections on mulching, pruning, soil preparation, and tool choices are all extremely helpful. With bullet-point lists, icons for highlighting categories like ecofriendly or time-saving, and simple tables and charts, how-to photos aren't essential, but if pictorial aids are what you need for learning, look elsewhere. --Jill Lightner

I was one of those Dummies:
I don't know how it happened but I thought I had not inherited the green thumb that my parents and Grandparents all had. That is until I found this wonderful guide to beginners gardening and it answered all the questions or told me simply how to find out the answers. I believe my local nursery was also happy that I took time out from trying to do it on my own and read the book.My mother said that she even learned a few new things while glancing through. It is also a good brush up guide before the spring thaw.

Just right...:
I am a novice gardener who is trying to figure out how to maintain a well-landscaped property that I inherited. After the first couple of years of letting the place "rest on its laurels" (i.e., get by on its past grandeur and do nothing to maintain it except to water it every now and then, but otherwise neglecting it and letting it get weedy and rangy), I have finally tackled the project of educating myself about gardening and trying to restore some freshness and style to my garden. This book offers a very skillful overview of everything I need to know in order to take on this project. It gives an overview of pretty much every fundamental of gardening, giving enough explanation to help you understand the logic behind the "rules" of garden creation and maintenance, but without the kind of technical detail that would make it tedious or would glaze the eye of the beginner. I have found this an excellent "starter" book--gives the lay of the land, as it were, so that you can establish basic competence and understanding before you go onto more specialized knowledge. THANKS!

Garden Book for Idiots:
Actually this is a pretty decent book and there are many good gardening tips in it. I guess the main reason I'm not very fond of it ( got it as a gift and promptly gave it away myself ) is that I find the whole idea of it rather tasteless. Perhaps for folks whose idea of good reading is comic books, this would be the perfect garden book. It is indeed set up for those who are easily distracted, lots of bullet points and little boxes and so on. I question whether or not this book was even needed. There are many fine how-to garden books already out there. The old Taylor's Encyclopedia of Gardening, for example, can usually be found used for about the same price or less. Taylors, although old, is a real gardening book. Somehow I equate gardening with intelligence, with class, with good taste. I enjoy having shelves of books on all the different aspects of horticulture and hardly want one titled Gardening for Dummies. I have a book, Auto Repair for Dummies (also a present) and somehow I don't mind being an automotive dummy. But a garden variety dummy is a bit much. Nonetheless, if you simply don't have the patience for most books, and you don't know beans about gardening, go for it. Despite the title, the author, Michael MacCaskey, knows plenty about gardening.

This Book Helped Turn My Black Thumb Green:
Let's say for a second that you DON'T live in one of those regions where most everything grows with little effort. If that's the case, and you'd really LIKE to have a great garden or flower bed, I highly recommend this book. I used to have the black thumb of death when it came to plants and flowers, but that has turned quite green since buying MacCaskey's book. So WHY does it help? First, it has easy-to-access tip after tip about what plants and flowers need in general as well as what SPECIFIC plants need in order to thrive and look good. It helped me turn a garden that was at first forced upon me into one that looks as if I know what I am doing. Second, it's also great because it helped me IDENTIFY a lot of the plants in my inherited garden, before telling me how to help them grow happily. After all, you can't really help plants grow if you don't know what they are. It even has extensive sections on growing vegetables and, to a lesser extent, fruit. The language is great, too, in that it's well-organized in a way that makes it accessible while it teaches readers how to speak "gardenese" so you can ask for everything you need at your local nursery. In fact, when you have this book, even other people in your family start to turn to you for answers about gardening. I found this to be very cool, especially since I quickly found that, surprisingly enough, I now really do know a few things about gardening. Whoda thunk it? But the most important thing that I know now, in regard to my garden, is that with this book in my back pocket, this coming Spring is going to be one of the best ever for my little corner of suburbia. So, if you're a plant expert (or just a Californian), you may not need this book. If, on the other hand, you are human and sometimes feel as though you live in the land of misfit plants, get this book. You'll be SO glad you did.

An excellent reference book for the aspiring gardener.:
I am sometimes asked which gardening books I would recommend. I would have to say one of the top books in my arsenal is "Gardening for Dummies". What makes this easy to understand book a worthwhile read are the many how-to's and tips it offers. It gets down to the basics of gardening. You learn how to become a green thumb gardener by selecting plants that grow well in the area you live, the healthy advantages of growing different plants yourself, or just for the aesthetic value gardening offers. An excellent guide for the aspiring gardener.