From the Garden Bookshelf

The Scented Garden (SHNS photo courtesy Ryland, Peters & Small)

The Scented Garden, By Richard Bird. Ryland, Peters & Small, $14.95.

• The Scented Garden, at first glance, looks immensely inviting and infinitely doable. There are gorgeous pictures of flowers that you can nearly smell right off the page. Each project has a fold-out page with blueprints on how to accomplish it.

• But unless you are a skilled gardener with lots of time to tend to your garden, The Scented Garden, might be a little too much to handle. Besides a couple features on flower boxes and container gardening, the knot gardens and border gardens call for lots of maintenance, not to mention construction.

• But wouldn't it be nice to have vines of roses climbing up your elm tree? The photos in this book might be enough for a casual gardener to take on the challenge.