Tending Your Garden: A Year-Round Guide to Garden Maintenance

by Gordon Hayward, Mary Hayward

Gardening is the primary recreational activity of Americans. Since the 1980s, when gardening caught fire as a national passion, we have spent billions of dollars on what we grow for our own pleasure; and in all that time, not one book has been published on the broad subject of garden maintenance.


For twenty-five years, the Haywards, expert horticultural consultants and authors of many books and articles, have been tending their own garden in Vermont. Here, beautiful photographs illustrate how and what the Haywards do in their garden from earliest spring until snowfall: pruning trees and shrubs; planting, staking, and dividing perennials; and edging, deadheading, and weeding. They also include many tips for reducing maintenance. Their advice can be put to work in the reader's garden, regardless of size or location. Line drawings by Elayne Sears give more details on specific techniques. Anecdotal, encouraging, and crammed with information, this is a gorgeous treatment of a very practical subject.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 2007

Reviews

[Cris]

I generally flip through gardening books, but this is the first book I felt that truly needed read because it answers the question of "what is the purpose of gardening". There are not a lot of factoids in this book or illustrations of advanced projects. Instead it coveys a spirit, an attitude, a hope. Why do gardeners do this or that? It lays out the problems by outlining the yearly work in his garden. This is not a dogmatic book. Instead it sets out the questions and debates of the gardening world. Hayward shares some learning moments humbly and without embellishment. I felt it taught me to think like a gardener.

[Patricia]

Beautiful pictures and good suggestions some that I have already used. I'll probably reread it this year.

[Pat]

This is an older and very practical book. Like working along side an older friend. This is how We do this gardening thing. I liked this book's tone and its series of photos about getting things done. Pruning. Raking leaves. Simple, normal reality. A good book. and yes, I read it all, happily.

[Zora]

About one man's garden, not the how-to it claims to be. This might work if the author came across as likeable. Unfortunately...

[Ti Su]

Garden journal from Vermont. Illustrations and pictures are good, but not general enough for me.

[Fran]

a little too formal style for me but useful info nonetheless