The One-Hour Garden

Book cover to The One-Hour Garden. (SHNS photo courtesy Reader's Digest)

It's hard to tell from reading this book whether its advice truly results in a one-hour garden, but its straight-forward charts and color-coded sections certainly suggest that tending it will be easy.

So many gardening books are nothing more than a mental trip to fantasyland for those of us with jobs and kids and virtually no time to maintain a garden, much less read a book about one.

The One-Hour Garden, however, provides lists of plants, shrubs, climbers, groundcover, and mulch for every scenario, from a tiny patio to a sweeping lawn. It's a shopping list of what to get that will not keep you slaving year-round. Take the book to your local nursery and you can't go wrong.

I knew I would like this book from its statement at the very beginning: "Begin by simplifying the overall design of the garden and do away with any features or plants that don't earn their keep."

(Review by Jennifer Sergent, Scripps Media)