The Essential Gardener

Planning, designing, planting, and watching the garden grow gives one a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of creating a thing of beauty. Here is indispensable information for the gardener, whether novice or expert, on the most popular and important plants for the garden.

This book is designed to help, encourage, and inspire gardeners, whether they are novice or experienced. It is packed with info about choosing and buying plants.

Now you can learn about gardening from those who know best. The authors of this book, The Calgary Horticultural Society, are all Calgarians, all gardeners, and they know how to produce glorious blooms, tasty vegetables, elegant lawns, and healthy trees and shrubs in the unique climate of Alberta's Chinook region. They know that what works in more hospitable climates won't necessarily succeed where frequent winter thaws, heavily alkaline soils, and drying summer winds constantly challenge a gardener's ingenuity. The Calgary Gardener is jam-packed with up-to-date information and illustrations, as well as colour photographs of picturesque Calgary gardens and recommended annuals and perennials. With hundreds of years of combined gardening experience, the authors share their accumulated wisdom in a lively and inviting style. Beginning and veteran gardeners alike will find both inspiration and hours of enjoyment in this comprehensive and practical guide.

A comprehensive informative, utterly practical, eminently useful and personally ingenious guide.

All the info you need to be a better gardener, whether you’re just starting out or needing to brush up on your skills. You don’t have to have a green thumb to have a healthy thriving garden! Inside The Beginner’s Guide to Gardening, you’ll learn: Skills and Techniques: Valuable expert guide to developing new gardens and taking care of those you already have Getting Started: How to choose healthy plants and build productive soil Garden Care: Easy-to-follow, time-saving methods and the least toxic disease & pest controls Annuals, Perennials, Bulbs: Advice on growing, propagating, and caring for flowers in containers and the garden, with plant encyclopedias Roses: How to select, grow, and prune healthy roses, as well as control pests & diseases Ground Covers, Trees, Shrubs: Fundamentals on planting, growing, and maintaining, plus detailed plant directories Vegetables and Herbs: Introduction to growing and care, including informative directories Specialty Gardens: Basics on creating water gardens, butterfly gardens, and gardens for birds Few pastimes are as rewarding as gardening. With a little bit of ground and a few seeds or plants, anyone can be a gardener, and almost any collection of plants can be a garden. Gardening can be a refreshingly simple activity in an increasingly complex world. But you’ll have greater success and more fun if you start with an understanding of basic gardening practices. The techniques in this book are easy to follow and suitable for all gardeners—from beginners to advanced. Ecologically friendly methods are included so that you can create a garden that eventually helps to sustain itself. The tools and materials you’ll need are included with each step-by-step project, and each is rated for difficulty. With well over three hundred photos and illustrations to guide you through each step of the process, this is your essential starter’s guide to beginning gardening!