Customer Reviews

Midwest Home Landscaping: Including Southern Canada

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Written by the founding editor of "Gardening" magazine Roger Holmes and award-winning author Rita Buchanan, and now in a new and expanded edition featuring information on more plants and additional suggested designs, Midwest Home Landscaping Including Southern Canada is a comprehensive guide to making one's home landscape more attractive and functional. Chapters address how to skillfully plan a design for one's yard, how to organize one's project and perform tasks ranging from clearing the site to fences and trellises to the planting process, and profiles of a variety of landscaping plants ideal for homes situated in the upper Midwest and Southern Canada. Step-by-step instructions and full-color photography and diagrams walk the reader through each task, and the text covers both ideas for selecting and coordinating themes as well as practical nitty-gritty details. Midwest Home Landscaping is a first-rate, comprehensive resource for homeowners of all background, regardless of past experience in gardening or landscaping.

I'm not a gardener but then again I have never had a house to HAVE a garden. We are moving onto a brand new house and I found this book by accident.

It is outstanding.

It will give you ideas on what to plant in the shade, sun part sun and what I like most are the diagrams. I have no eye for what a garden will look like in 2 months and how I should plant a garden that looks lush and well thought out. I would have planted a garden with random flowers spaced too far apart.

Perfect book for somebody that wants a garden that looks like they knew what they were doing.

Visually enticing, this book is loaded with lovely pictures and illustrations. It's a great idea book, plus basic landscaping skills instruction and planting templates. I can't fully recommend it, however, because it advocates planting some exotic species that I have spent days removing from our suburban property. These include vinca, sweet woodruff, goutweed and carpet bugle that invaded adjacent woodland and formed mats that crowded out wildflowers. It pains me to see these plants recommended for woodland borders! Japanese barberry is another particularly onerous, yet suggested, plant that is spread by birds and forms impenetrable thickets in natural areas. To their credit, Holmes and Buchanan have done a good job of also presenting a variety of native North American plant choices with ecological benefits beyond the exotics.

This book is great! It was just what I needed. It has detailed, creative, and artistic landscaping plans plus helpful planting and design information! I bought two copies of this book so I can give my daughter one!

I found this book to be a very good guide on the selection of plants to use in our landscaping improvements. I am not much a plant selection person and this book has helped in making some good choices.

It is very very similar to the 1999 edition which I already owned. In my opinion, there is no reason to own both, or to replace the old one with the new one.

A big problem I've had with gardening books is that they so often cover areas with different climates (such as the wet Pacific Northwest) than that which I have to face here in the American Midwest. This book, however, has shown itself to be an excellent resource!

It starts out with a portfolio of 23 designs, giving the reader excellent advice on appearance and what plants to use, complete with color pictures and illustrations, and a sample graph paper design. After that is a series of plant profiles that looks at garden plants and their needs. The final part of the book has step-by-step instructions (again with great color illustrations) on building projects, such as sidewalks, walls, patios and so much more.

So, just to make everything perfectly clear, I loved this book, and highly recommend it to every gardener in the American Midwest!

Midwest Home Landscaping is an amazing guide to plant identification, placement, and growth expectations exclusive to the midwest area. The design concepts are a great tool to customize your own landscaping plan.

Does a good job combining landscape plans and a wide range of plants that are appropriate for zone, light, and soil conditions. It enables a beginner to get advanced results on the first try.

I moved from the south to the midwest 4 years ago and needless to say the weather and the plants that survive in this region are quite different from where I am from. This book is very informative. It has helped me and I think it would help anyone whether you are new to the midwest or been in this region from day one.