The Lazy Gardener - Softcover

Grey, Mara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0028622170 ISBN 13: 9780028622170

Publisher: Wiley, 1998

Synopsis

Do you enjoy natural beauty but don t have the time to cultivate a garden? Have you always longed for a beautiful yard, but find the idea of self-imposed yard work downright unpleasant? For busy people who want to have a garden but don t have the time or don t want to spend the time The Lazy Gardener tells us how to decrease the effort and increase the enjoyment of having a garden, in an amusing but practical way. Readers can get right to the heart of their problems by starting with a fun, hands-on quiz called HELP I m Too Busy to Read This Book, or spend a leisurely afternoon reading the book from cover to cover. The author covers everything from choosing the right plants for your environment to designing a manageable garden and paring down chores. The book is illustrated with beautiful drawings by Vasily Kafanov. Mara Grey has been a professional gardener for over 20 years. Her weekly radio show, The Lazy Gardener, is broadcast in Washington, and she has a newspaper column by the same name. Grey writes for such publications as Horticulture Magazine, and teaches classes on gardening and landscape design this year she will be teaching a Lazy Gardener course.

About this title

From the Author:

For those with more to do than weed the garden
I'm as time-starved as the rest of the world, a professional Celtic harper, gardener and writer with two kids. I fall in love with almost every plant I meet, but living together's not always possible. Most of the time, my garden's on its own.

Sharing what I've learned about simple, easy gardening, as I've done in this book, is a joy for me, both fun and instructive. I always teach myself as well as my readers.

And gardening can be easy, with the right approach and a little work at the beginning. Fledgling landscapes are like other baby birds - they need care for a while, then they can fly on their own.

More than anything else, we all need to take the pyramid of "least time planning, less time planting and most time maintaining" and tip it upside down. If we want to spend minutes a month weeding, then we have to spend some hours on initial planning.

The hardest part of lazy gardening, the qualities I find hardest to cultivate myself, are self-control and patience. Even now, when I walk into a nursery, some treasure will catch me, demanding to come home and live with me even though I know I just don't have the right place for it yet. But I'm learning to value my spare time as much as the plants that tempt me.

May this book guide you toward many hours of sitting on the lawn or in a comfortable chair, admiring the self-reliant landscape surrounding you, the birds, the butterflies and, most of all, the beauty you've always longed for.

Synopsis:

Explains ways to prioritize gardening chores, design a low-maintenance garden, and choose plants that require little care.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0028622170
• ISBN 13: 9780028622170
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 164