The Garden Primer

Gardening is very simple, really. You just have to learn to think like a plant.

- Barbara Damrosch

Garden simply, beautifully, and well with The Garden Primer, a comprehensive gardening reference jam-packing with useful information, advice, tips, and quirky wisdom. Barbara Damrosch, an "old-fashioned dirt gardener," spent years refining her natural, common-sense approach to gardening and now guides you through all aspects of planning, planting, and upkeep.

Remarkably Complete

Each chapter is a book in itself.

Planning Your Property: landscape your yard into a series of "outdoor rooms"

What Plants Need: understand the basics and avoid complex rules and toxic chemicals

Garden Gear: what's essential and what's not

How to Buy Plants: a guide through the nursery jungle

Annuals: choose and combine for dependable summer color

Perennials: coordinate a flower garden to bloom each year

Vegetables: harvesting a bounty you'll really use

Herbs: making your herb garden as pretty as it is useful

Fruits: pick the best for your climate

Bulbs: plant them properly, display them imaginatively

Roses: raising roses without fear - they're really not "fussy"

Lawns and Ground Covers: how to have a better lawn, and what to use in places where you don't want grass

Vines: keeping them within bounds

Shrubs: find interesting shrubs and avoid common pruning mistakes

Trees: select new trees to enhance your property and make the most of the old

Wildflowers: what really works at home and what doesn't

Houseplants: keep your indoor garden in good health

With complete instructions for growing and tending approximately 300 plants, plus 365 illustrations, easy-to-read diagrams, and design plans for all types of gardens.

A 688-page volume jam-packed with practical information, advice, tips, and quirky wisdom, both basic enough for the novice and complete enough to help those with more experience improve their gardening habits, The Garden Primerleads all readers down the path to a simpler and more successful garden.

Combining easy "how-to" instruction with quirky wisdom and tried-and-true advice, the author reassuringly guides the reader through the flower garden, the decorative garden, the vegetable patch, and more. Each fully illustrated chapter is a book in itself, from planning your property and stocking the tool shed to growing perennials, annuals, roses, bulbs, vegetables, herbs, fruits, lawns and groundcover, trees, shrubs, vines, and more. Instructions are included for growing and tending approximately 300 plants. Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Quality Paperback Book Club, and the Better Homes and Gardens Family Book Service. 364,000 copies in print. A Regina Ryan Book.

Barbara Damrosch is a professional land designer and the author of The Garden Primer and Theme Gardens. She lives and gardens in Maine with her husband, the organic gardening authority Eliot Coleman.

Greenside Up

Planning Your Property

What Plants Need

Gardening Gear

How to Buy Plants

Annuals

Perennials

Vegetables

Herbs

Fruits

Bulbs

Roses

Lawns and Ground Covers

Vines

Shrubs

Trees

Wildflowers

Houseplants