The First time Gardener Growing Plants and Flowers: All the know-how you need to plant and tend outdoor areas using eco-friendly methods (The First-Time Gardener's Guides, 2) (Volume 2)

The First-Time Gardener is an extremely helpful book! It is very well written and easy to navigate. The photographs, diagrams, and other graphic features are very informative. I absolutely love learning from a horticulturist and a science teacher, as they have amazing insight to offer. We recently bought a new house with a yard filled with plants, flowers, and trees that I was unsure how to care for effectively, and this book has been a tremendous help. I highly recommend it to first-time gardeners and experienced gardeners as well!

Written well and fun to read and dream about my garden to be

No matter how many or few years you have kept a garden, don’t miss the McManus’ voices of encouragement and gentle direction. Their calm beckoning to grow in garden know-how is a balm to all gardeners at every level of experience. They introduce the basics, fundamental skills we all return to throughout the seasons, and guide us in garden planning, all the while working as an endearing husband-and-wife team. Whether you are ready to dig in for the first time, to reassess your garden, to change-up plant design or garden care strategies, The First-Time Gardener is an inspiring read to help you find your way.

This is a really comprehensive guide and well organized. It has been super helpful as we've started our garden as well as landscaping projects. The pictures are great and step by step instructions/tips make it a really useful tool. I'm sure we will refer back to it regularly.

Easy to read and lots of information to use

Well written.

Although this book is titled “The First Time Gardener: Growing Plants and Flowers, a more apt but offensive title might be “Fixing The Uninformed Gardener”, or “Do you just randomly grab stuff that looks pretty from the home-garden store without knowing what on earth you’re doing? Let’s not do that anymore”. This book has so much great flower garden guidance - even for those of us who’ve been growing plant gardens all along but with little knowledge of how to make flowerbeds look and actually be healthy.This book starts with the basics of types of plants and what they need to grow before moving on to the things you need to do to select, plant, and maintain the healthiest flowerbeds possible.There’s a lot of good advice given, and it begins with teaching you to the condition of the space you’re putting flowers into (what climate are you in, how much sun does the flowerbed get, how is the soil, and how much space to you have?) Once you know these things about your own beds, you can select flowers for the conditions you have. And while it’s tempting to pick spaces in your flower garden for the size of the plant when you get it, Sean and Allison McManus explain that you’re doing no favors to the look of your flowerbed or to the plants themselves by not planting based on how big the plants are supposed to get at maturity.In addition to the advice given in this book about selection, planting, and maintenance, with super-important things reiterated in tips or hack callouts, the authors maintain a bonus companion website with YouTube videos, articles, and podcasts.This book doesn’t go into specifics about caring for each and ever plant imaginable out there but there is advice on several dozen common plants as a starting point. For example, there are instructions on properly pruning rose bushes but not holly or boxwood. The breadth and depth of detail contained in this book is really good given its small size. The book can be read in a few hours rather, so it’s manageable rather than overwhelming.Informative and practical, this book will give you pointers on how to spend some of your time that you probably weren’t devoting to your flower gardens before — but your plants and your eyes will definitely thank you.

The authors have written (at least) two books on gardening. This one is more of a general gardening book for creating a beautiful landscape and considerations that go into it. It cover everything from the soil to the different types of plants (think flowers, shrubs, trees, and more) and annuals vs perennials.The book covers most anything you would need to get started from planning a garden layout, the tools and pots you may need, how to plant, going with seeds vs starts or bulbs (if applicable) and of course dealing with pests that are likely to affect just about any garden be it vegetable or more decorative (the focus of this book).Along with the content of the book, the authors have a companion website with a good number of videos on specific topics where they walk your through specific things. You can see a tutorials on building seasonal containers, how to determine your soil texture, how to mulch around existing plants, and learn about creating a path through the garden using leftover garden materials. It looks like maybe a few more videos were or are intended to make it to the website. What is there adds to the content of the book and actually walks you through the steps to do various tasks.Overall, this is an excellent book for getting started and learning the basics of gardening. I got this book and the "Growing Vegetables" book by the same authors and found both quite helpful though I used the "Growing Vegetables" book much more than this one. I prefer more tangible benefits from gardening in the form of food. If you are more interested in creating a beautiful landscape, then this is the book for you. If you want to grow food then get their book on growing vegetables. If you're a newer gardener, this or the veggie focused book will provide lots of insight to help make your efforts more successful than if you just wing it as I did during the year of the pandemic lock down.