Step-By-Step Garden Basics

This smooth combination of ideas, garden creations and hardcore how-tos will inspire beginning gardeners. In the opening chapter, ""Welcome to My Garden,"" readers will discover a personal entry point in the enticing portrayals of garden types: cutting, ornamental, formal, kitchen, island bed, border, edible flower, country garden and entryway gardens. By spotlighting only two attributes--color and height--this introduction puts accessible tools in the novice's hand. The text, by veteran garden writer Liz Ball, squeezes a vast range of practices into skillfully selected topics arranged by seasons. For example, spring themes include seed starting and crop rotation, planting strawberries and dividing perennials, constructing cold frames and fabric tunnels to extend the season and diagnosing plant diseases and pest damage. The final chapter, ""Gardening Basics,"" rounds out the rudiments and simplifies such inscrutable matters as pH levels, fertilizer components (N-P-K), plant diseases and pests. Catalogue sources for seeds, bulbs and plants add a winter's worth of garden sport. (Jan.)