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Before & After Garden Makeovers
- Brilliant photo essay highlight 44 before-and-after gardens
- How-to info includes garden designs, plans, and hands-on tips and techniques
- Special features on adding lawns, installing flagstone paths, and building raised beds
- Ideal for total redesigns or for specific areas, including decks, courtyards, and entryways
- Gives the boost you need to tackle that all-important first step toward creating the garden you've always wanted
- How-to info includes garden designs, plans, and hands-on tips and techniques
- Special features on adding lawns, installing flagstone paths, and building raised beds
- Ideal for total redesigns or for specific areas, including decks, courtyards, and entryways
- Gives the boost you need to tackle that all-important first step toward creating the garden you've always wanted
- GenresGardeningNonfiction
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 24, 2017
Inspirational photos, not a how-to. Great ideas! Now if I could only accomplish them.
September 2, 2019
One of the more important aspects of gardening is having a sense of imagination. All too often when it comes to the physical world, we see how things are and do not pay enough attention to how they could be. It is admittedly not very easy to see how things could be, especially when they are not very exciting or very attractive, but this book is very good at showing how the same space can be transformed with some imagination and attention to aesthetics and landscape design. I do not consider myself an expert in this particular matter, but I do appreciate the way a good garden looks and enjoy going to gardens for fun, and there is a lot here to appreciate if you like gardens. One of the particular joys of a book like this is the way that it can help the reader to visualize lawns and garden areas that look particularly ugly or particularly bland and see some ways that they can be made into beautiful gardens through a variety of means. And those who are in the same boat as some of the people on here should take some of the hints on how to turn a bland or boring or empty yard into a beautiful one.
The book itself is about 150 pages or so and is very simply designed, beginning with some basic tips and principles and then filled with before and after looks at the same garden spaces, with lots of photos as well as maps that show the landscape design in the after gardens. There are a lot of patterns that can be determined, in that the before photos feature boring or bare lawns most of the time while the after photos show the addition of such awesome things as putting greens (I want one of these in a future garden of mine), verandas, paths made of stone, as well as the addition of trees and sometimes wild looking patterns of flowers and hedges that resembles best an English garden approach. More than that, though, this book shows the way that one can use one's space to advantage, figuring out given the yard available how to turn it into a compelling garden through one way or another, which ends up looking very excellent and making the read a pleasant one.
If this book has any subtle point to it, it is the way that the author of the book points out that people can often use the help of a landscape designer when it comes to turning their boring lawns or even dangerous existing yards into beautiful and somewhat whimsical gardens. Most people do not have a firm aesthetic sense of their own or know what is necessary to make a yard into a beautiful garden. In addition, the people who build homes are often not very good at creating yards, not least because it is far easy to just plant some boring grass next to one's boring sidewalk and to call it a day rather than think of ways to make homes distinctive in their landscaping. And while I do not think that any of these gardens should run afoul of an overzealous HOA, there are at least a few of the more wild gardens here that might be a bit too wild for the tastes of some. As far as I am concerned, these are beautiful examples of ways that boring or abandoned yards can be turned into compelling and attractive gardens based on the space that is available and some expense, but hardly overwhelming cost.
The book itself is about 150 pages or so and is very simply designed, beginning with some basic tips and principles and then filled with before and after looks at the same garden spaces, with lots of photos as well as maps that show the landscape design in the after gardens. There are a lot of patterns that can be determined, in that the before photos feature boring or bare lawns most of the time while the after photos show the addition of such awesome things as putting greens (I want one of these in a future garden of mine), verandas, paths made of stone, as well as the addition of trees and sometimes wild looking patterns of flowers and hedges that resembles best an English garden approach. More than that, though, this book shows the way that one can use one's space to advantage, figuring out given the yard available how to turn it into a compelling garden through one way or another, which ends up looking very excellent and making the read a pleasant one.
If this book has any subtle point to it, it is the way that the author of the book points out that people can often use the help of a landscape designer when it comes to turning their boring lawns or even dangerous existing yards into beautiful and somewhat whimsical gardens. Most people do not have a firm aesthetic sense of their own or know what is necessary to make a yard into a beautiful garden. In addition, the people who build homes are often not very good at creating yards, not least because it is far easy to just plant some boring grass next to one's boring sidewalk and to call it a day rather than think of ways to make homes distinctive in their landscaping. And while I do not think that any of these gardens should run afoul of an overzealous HOA, there are at least a few of the more wild gardens here that might be a bit too wild for the tastes of some. As far as I am concerned, these are beautiful examples of ways that boring or abandoned yards can be turned into compelling and attractive gardens based on the space that is available and some expense, but hardly overwhelming cost.
May 31, 2021
Lots of great before and after photos. I wish budgets and timeframes had been included. Lots of the projects were striking, but had taken several years to grow in. Several of the projects seemed so large scale (new stone pathways, new decks, mature trees) they easily could run into tens of thousands of dollars. Still, a fun book to peruse through for inspiration.
October 18, 2014
Like many readers, I like before and after books because they make me optimistic that I too can fix the problems I face accomplish a "miracle". Unfortunately this book, like many of its kind, is basically eye candy. The photographs are often deceptive as the before photos are often in black and white and show unfavorable views of the house. Likewise the after photographs are always at the peak of bloom and by the author's own admission taken several years after installation. I was disappointed that the before and after photographs often did not correlate resulting in confusion on what the changes were actually made and why. The biggest problem with this book is the author's failure to explain the design theory behind the changes that were made. The text does not explain in detail that a tall bush was added here to balance the weight of this house feature for example. I do recommend the book with major reservations because learning about gardening is about looking at what other people have done and picking up ideas.
August 15, 2018
More of an "inspiration and ideas" book than a how-to one, I found the book an easy read with decent pictures. The gardens showcased a few different styles, as well as some difficult situations to deal with. Some of the gardens included diagrams that I found helpful in understanding their layout. It might have been nice if the book had gone into a little more detail in some cases but overall it was enjoyable and encouraging.
June 6, 2013
As much as I enjoyed looking at the before and after garden photos, I found the text lacking in information. I would have appreciated specific information about each garden such as the climate/zone, specific plant varieties used, and suggestions on how to achieve similar results as those photographed.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews