The Budget Gardener: Twice the Garden for Half the Price

A standout among books featuring lush photographs of dream gardens and elegantly landscaped estates, this guide to gardening on a shoestring will be welcomed by those with more time on their hands than money. Gilmer offers a bumper crop of low-cost and creative gardening alternatives for those with limited resources, including such angles as salvaging plants from nursery dumpsters and landscape contractors, building a cold frame (""the poor gardener's greenhouse""), foraging for free organic soil amendments (check the local high school wood shop for sawdust and wood shavings), and scouring military surplus stores for such useful items as army fatigues (they make ""ideal gardening pants,"" according to Gilmer) and ammo boxes (for locking away toxic garden chemicals). Though some of the ideas are a bit off-the-wall (inverted champagne bottles as an edging; discarded hubcaps as hanging planters), most are practical and will delight green-thumb tightwads everywhere. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Mar.)