Customer Reviews

The Backyard Landscaper: 40 Professional Designs for Do-It-Yourselfers

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book has plenty of ideas for backyards, but they're all sketches, not photographs. Plus, you have to order the blueprints to find out what plants they're talking about in the book. This book was not very helpful.

The landscape plans are tiny and there are no plant lists - you have to buy the plant list, deck/structure plans and useable sized landscape plans. When I realized this could easily amount to a hundred bucks I returned the book (and I NEVER return anything).

You are asked to invest this money in a landscape design based on an artist rendering of the design, generally from one angle and in one season. I can't imagine anyone purchasing a plan this way.

And wosrt of all many of these plans are not original. They are the same or very similar to plans that have appeared in landscape or house design magazines (where you also have to order the plans and plant lists).

For about the price of this book you can buy Sunset Northeastern Landscaping, Landscaping in the Northeast and Canada zones 3,4,5 and 6 or something similar for your region. With these books you get plans with plant lists and descriptions, how-to info, photos and much more.

Please look around befor you waste money on this book. There are MUCH better books out there.

Over the last decade we have landscaped 3 homes and the landscape plans here were a huge help in defining what we wanted and how exactly to lay out the plants. I have referred to this book and Easy Care Landscape Plans over and over again. I only wish they had a book filled with plans for those of us dealing with small California yards!

This book is not designed to be all things for all people, but rather a starting point. I think it gives good sketches for ideas on what you might want to do with your landscaping. It shows you general classes of plants, how many, and where to place them to achieve similar results from what is depicted in the book. I did not find one particular sketch to be fitting of what I want but pieces of several that I used to draw my own sketch for my yard. Then with looking around the landscaping in my area and talking with the people at local nurseries, I have been able to select the appropriate plants to fit that sketch -- all for free. So if you are looking for an absolute cookbook approach to landscaping, this is not it. But if you want good ideas and some guidance, you'll find what you are looking for here. You can by the landscape plans for $55 or less. So the investment isn't so bad if you want the recipe too.