Landscaping Insight

This book is okay for homeowners wanting easy landscaping to-do them selfs. If you are looking at starting a landscaping business, this is not the book for you. Over all it is Okay.
Rating: 3 / 5

A very informative tome, but I think its tries to achieve too much in what is a rather large and varied subject. Should focus on the basics………….but to be fair still an excellent guide
Rating: 3 / 5

`Landscaping for Dummies’ by Philip Giroux, Bob Beckstrom, Lance Walheim and a cast of thousands is a typically ironic example of what you will find in this huge `Dummies’ series of books, which started out as a series of texts for PC subjects, where the PC had a knack of making us all feel like dummies. Since then, it has expanded to touch virtually every `practical’ subject in the known universe. That is, I haven’t seen any `Wittgenstein for Dummies’ or `Quantum Thermodynamics for Dummies’, as neither of these subjects are things the average intelligent, but uninformed person is likely to pick up to brief themselves for a weekend project of as a start to a new hobby.

The irony of this particular volume is that you really can’t make full use of it if you don’t have a good head on your shoulders and a fair amount of book learning under your belt, including such arcane High School subjects such as geometry and some building skills such as working with mortar, power saws, a level, and a full-sized shovel.

The first thing you discover is that landscaping is a really big subject. You probably didn’t know this, or you would not be considering buying this book. In four `parts’, the book breaks the subject down into Designing, Hardscaping, Planting, Planning, and Tips for putting Landscaping to good use. Since this book (and all books in this series) advertises itself as `A Reference for the Rest of Us’, I can’t complain too much about the odd order of these five subjects, but it does seem that `Objectives’ and `Planning’ should be Parts I and II respectively, rather than Parts V and IV. I confess that I even bought the book exclusively for its Hardscaping chapter, so I didn’t care if that came before or after planning.

Regarding the Hardscaping material, I found it remarkably advanced for a `dummy’. The projects start with simple walkways, but quickly advance to retaining walls, brick walls, and fences. My biggest surprise was the depth to which one must build deep planning into so simple a job as a retaining wall that is installed to square off an annoying slope in your yard. Not only do you have to lay a deep foundation, you also need to worry about drainage and install a special drainage pipe to carry off rainwater. Who Knew!!!

In other Parts of the book, it devotes relatively short chapters to subjects to which one could easily dedicate a whole book. One example is in the selection of a tree or trees to plant in your landscaping project. I looked at the description for Japanese maple (since I happen to have one of these) and found the entry reasonable, but possibly not as detailed as one may want, since it glossed over the fact that the difference in growing speed and average height of the different varieties of Acer Palmatum are sizable, and one will be disappointed if they get the tall lanky variety, when they wanted the low, burly `weeping’ variety.

But, if what you want is a first book on the subject, you could really do a lot worse. It has the one essential ingredient for an introductory book, a comprehensive bibliography, which includes not only books, but lots of magazines, professional organizations, and international web sites for getting more information.

I rarely resort to books in this series, but for those of you who want to venture into do it yourself landscaping, this is probably better, and possibly far better than, for example, the `Home Depot’ manual on the subject.

Rating: 4 / 5