Really handy book for designing your perfect garden. Appreciated the many illustrations and practical ideas for keeping your garden growing year round. Great book to have in my growing gardening library!

This is a lovely guidebook to how to create a garden. It explains garden design in a clear and concise manner, plus has dossiers on a large number of plants and how to use them. I had an electronic copy, so it didn't contain stickers to plan my garden, but that seems like a neat feature.

Gardening was everyones favorite...... This book is a good one for those love gardening......

4.5 Stars

This is a useful book for the gardener who knows their plants and wants to gain a better sense of garden design. I am not sure that it's best suited for a total novice, since the illustrations don't quite capture the nature of some of the plants. On the other hand, photographing plants to illustrate the author's structure and design points might have been extremely difficult. This book offers the ability to visualize designs with reusable clings and a planning board. For many garden designers, this will be useful, especially since the author is giving us a sense of the scale of the mature plants. One of the hardest aspects of planning for new garden designers is getting that sense of scale. When you buy young plants, you may incorrectly estimate final height, spoiling a design as the plants grow in. This book can potentially save the gardener that frustration. The author emphasizes the importance of defining structure with all-season plants and filling in with seasonal blooming plants for added color. All in all, a useful book!

Fantastic book! It really is a toolkit for gardening. It is perfectly designed and everything is provided to help you design your own garden. Whatever you want and need for putting together your garden are found in this book. The photos are great and it is a book to have as a manual throughout the process -- year after year even.

A perfect guide for the beginning gardener. I highly recommend for anyone who wants to make their flower beds fabulous!

Design-Your-Garden Toolkit by Michelle Gervais from Storey Publishing is a beautiful and fun book. I enjoy gardening but have never been able to create beds that look as good as the professionally planted beds some people, parks and public places have. This book points you in the right direction explaining the effective use of color, texture, size and shape of leaves, plant structure, "the golden ratio", focal points and more which are some of "the keys to a beautiful garden". There is a large plant guide and beautiful illustrations of the 78 plants. The hard copy of this book will come with 150 stickers and a fold out design board. Now that is fun! I can't wait to purchase a hard copy of this book. Definitely a helpful guide for creating a garden you can be proud of.
Thank you NetGalley, Storey Publishing and Michelle Gervais.

I know my way around my vegetable garden, mostly from years of trial and error. This year, we replaced an old wood deck with a paver patio and retaining wall and guess what still needs to be done. Yes, indeed, the landscaping and planting plan and I am a total novice in that area. This book provided everything I could want to create interesting plant arrangements and more importantly, will save me from having to dig up and move plants because I misjudged height or width. The descriptions told me if the plant suggested in this book was appropriate for my zone, the light requirement and how tall and wide the plant could grow. The author shares 'The Keys to a Beautiful Garden' through the use of harmony and contrast, color, texture, form and focal points. There is so much great information given even before the ‘Meet the Plants' section. Next summer, I'll not only be enjoying my DIY patio but a beautifully landscaped area too!
One of my favorite quotes, and so fitting when enjoying a book about gardening, "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." – Marcus Tullius Cicero
Thank you, Michelle Gervais, Storey Publishing and NetGalley for a digital ARC. I will be buying the print version since the author also includes stickers and a fold-out design board, which to me, should be quite useful in planning.

Great book with fantastic ideas and well set out and written

Love to garden and this book is great. Easy to design a lovely garden. Will buy a copy for my potting shed.

This book is entitled a "toolkit" but seems more like a design manual. When I envision a toolkit, I envision tangible items that can be held in one's hand. The first half of the book describes the principles of design with colorful sketches as illustrations. While the art is pleasant, it's often primitive and lacking detail. I can envision the plants shown because I know my plants. But, a novice can't fill in the details missing in these sketches. For example, when describing leaf texture, it's difficult to see that texture with the sketches provided. Photographs would be much more helpful. The second half of the book describes useful plants in landscape design. Again, photos here would be much more helpful. For instance, the sketch of Russian Sage really doesn't reflect the intricate branching or the silver-gray leaves of this plant. It could just as easily be a lavender bush (to a novice). While the content in this book is well-suited to the novice at garden design, the illustrations don't serve that same level. They seem to be included more as a prompt to the experienced gardener to envision a picture of the details of that particular plant. For this reason, I"m not rating the book very highly.