Customer Reviews

Absolutely Beautiful Containers: The ABCs of Creative Container Gardens

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Don't be fooled--this book is a marketing ploy for Ball Horticultural trademarked plants, from the glowing overview of Ball in the Acknowledgements to the Ball varieties listed in the Index. The author is National Retail Accounts Manager for Ball. All the container recipes use ONLY Ball varieties, over and over. The author subtly encourages you to search from garden center to garden center until you find the exact variety (i.e. Ball variety) you're looking for. And for this hardcover advertisement of Ball plants, they want us to pay $24.95 retail! To be fair, there are some inspiring container gardens in the book. And, to be fair, you could substitute other brands of plants for the Ball plants listed, but the total number of different plants used in the container recipes is limited.
If you want to see dozens and dozens of beautiful container recipes for FREE, go to the Proven Winners Website. Yes, the recipes are advertisements for their own varieties, but at least they're free!

I took a garden class at a our local community college and this book was part of the private library of our instructor who is particular about the books she purchases in her library. I was so impressed with the book that I purchased it for my own library. This book contains 200 examples of container gardens and their "recipes" for how to do them. The color pictures as well as the details of the "ABC'S of container gardening are,in my opinion, wonderful. I have already used these ideas for my own container gardening and plan to give container garden gifts to others. It is a practical and very useful book that I will enjoy for many years to come! If you have an interest in container gardening or would like to give someone a nice hostess or new home gift - I would recommend that you consider this book as part of your library.

I recently took a class on container gardening & the instructor passed around this book. I ordered the book as soon as I returned home from the class. I have planted four containers using this book as a guide & so far, so good. The pictures are wonderful. The guide for each container is easy to follow. The author gives plenty of tips and advice on how to get started at the beginning of the book. I would recommend this book for anymore looking for assistance with container gardening.

This book is grrrreat. Once I started reading and planting in containers I couldn't stop. The instructions made it so easy and the pictures were so beautiful that before I knew it I had planted almost all of the containers that were pictured in the book. The plants listed were very easy to find. What fun..... I am now able to design my own planted containers. My friends and family have ooooo'd and ahhhhhhhh'd over everything I have done in this book. Everyone should have one!

This book happened to be very helpful on creating containers. It help me get excellent ideas and also discover new plants that I was unaware existed before I read this book. I thought it was well written and complemented by great photos. Simple to use and great conversation piece around a cup of coffee in your garden.