cover image Landscape Magic

Landscape Magic

Douglas Green, Vince Babak. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $19.95 (144pp) ISBN 978-1-881527-85-5

Annuals get leggy, invasive perennials crowd out weaker ones, flowering shrubs plead for pruning, fruit trees stop bearing and hedges overgrow. Green presents solutions to all these problems. His magic depends on compost, pruning shears and shovels, plus the knowledge and the motivation to use these tools. Green, who runs a commercial nursery in Ontario, tells how to rejuvenate annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs, roses, evergreen shrubs, vines, trees, small fruits and lawns. Describing himself as a ``lazy gardener'' who prefers wandering in the garden to weeding it, Green provides detailed instructions that make pruning a monster shrub seem like a plausible endeavor. He also offers high-, medium- and low-maintenance approaches to lawns, a welcome recognition of the varying amounts of time and effort people are willing or able to invest. Helpful features, including clear and extensive pruning diagrams, plant propagation lists and an annotated bibliography, round out this bag of gardening tricks. (Nov.)