A gorgeous looking book with great photographic illustration and ideas. Not sure about all of the rules but it's a great place to start if you are a novice.

This is a pretty little garden book that's full of beautiful garden photos for inspiration and lots of great garden advice. Veteran gardeners may not find a lot of new advice but they'll be inspired by the photos. New gardeners will find lots of great advice. This book would make a great coffee table book, gift or book to cozy up with during dreary winter months.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

This is a book for you to make your own garden and how to care for it when you are finished. If you already have a garden and want changes the author takes you through those as well. You find out when is the best time to re-plant, how to re-plant into pots, types of soil is best, how much or how little you should water which I found is very helpful and in the long run can save you money in not having to repurchase plants. She also gives you suggestions on the types of plants you want because certain ones attract different birds, or some even attract butterflies. I found this book to be full of useful information and a very handy book to have around for me in my shed with all of my gardening and replanting items. A very good book.

This book was absolutely beautiful. Even without the useful knowledge, the pictures by themselves were coffee book table worthy. The tips are based on sound gardening advice and can be used by even the greenest gardener (pun intended). From designing your garden to tending to it on a daily basis, this book gives small helpful bits of information that can help you on your road to creating the best garden you can.

Kate Frey has gardened and designed gardens all over the world. In Ground Rules, she touches on practically every topic about beginning a garden that could be considered and should be considered. In planning your garden, consider color, the season, climate, space. She reminds us to consider using multiple plants in a pot and multiple colors in an area. Consider the soil and adjust your fertilizer because you shouldn’t fertilize everything the same way. There are beautiful garden scenes throughout the discussion of rules. All of this and more in less than 250 pages. Grab your shovel and see how your garden grows.

Ground Rules (100 Easy Lessons for Growing a More Glorious Garden) by Kate Frey is exactly what the name implies. It is a book of readable lessons for the novice yard gardener. While I love gardening, there is much that I do not know. I have read many different books on gardening but found this to be the easiest and clearest all around. For those who are experts on gardening this may not have new information. For me it was wonderful. I found it to be an excellent read. I am not sure that I don’t still find gardening to be a taunting task, but Ground Rules encourages one to try their hand at it.

While it could be used as a reference for a particular question, I read it from beginning to end enjoying the different “lessons” from rootbound plants to hummingbird migration. The illustrations are closeups, clear and beautiful. For that reason this book could also become a coffee table book; kept close by anyone’s casual look through.

This is a little book that gives rules about how to make a great garden. The rules are shown as one-page lessons. They will help new gardeners willing to get some basic knowledge but if you are seeking for concrete and step by step explanations, this book will not be for you. If you are already an expert gardener, you will not learn anything more from this book. Therefore, it is a great gift for new gardeners but will be much less interesting for experienced gardeners.

Divided into six sections, Ground Rules begins with Become your own garden designer, taking into consideration where you want to have a seating area, or do you want tables and chairs, a fountain, perhaps. Do you want a place where you can hide away from the rest of the world, or do you want to have an open and spacious design? So many things to think about – what kinds of plants, based on where you live and how the seasons vary, what is your vision? I think that this is the most important thing to know or decide, or at least have some idea, so you can make a plan.

The photography in this is excellent, as is the advice that Ms. Frey offers. This could be used by any level gardener, or just for a lovely coffee table book, or something to just inspire you now and then. The photographs should also give you some inspiration for ideas for your own garden.

I miss having a yard I could actually create a garden in, although there are garden areas in mine, but they are established with plants I would never have chosen, but make sense – easy to care for. I’m more interested in having one that attracts butterflies and birds, and is more aesthetically aligned with my taste. But this does give me ideas and incentive for some of the things I can change so that I can have a garden that I really enjoy looking at, sitting in, perhaps reading in.

This is one I've already pre-ordered from my local bookstore.


Pub Date: 13 NOV 2018


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Timber Press

Ground Rules: 100 Easy Lessons for Growing a More Glorious Garden is a new gardening theory book by Kate Frey. It's 216 pages, available in hardback and ebook formats and due out 13th Nov, 2018.

This book does include 100 short 1-2 page tips to increase the reader's gardening enjoyment. To me, they read a lot like those page-a-day calendars. The entries are short and pithy and easy to read and digest. Most of the 'rules' are accompanied by lush garden photographs and it's the photography that really carries this book.

The photographs help illustrate the rules and I found a fair bit of inspiration. I've never been a blind follower or a really habitual planner. This often leads me to wander around my garden with irresistible impulse plant purchase in hand, trying to find a place to set it out. I've been saying for a long time that I really need more planning and structure in my garden and this book provides a number of delicious photographs of the potential benefits of careful planning.

Lovely book, bite size lessons.

Three and a half stars.

Lots of good wisdom and advice here -- "rules" is used really loosely, they are more like guidelines and suggestions. The book lacks practical advice and how-tos, but it's primary function of inspiring is definitely achieved. A great book for gardeners! My only complaint is I would have liked the author to touch on vegetables gardens.

My review is already up on Goodreads. It will go live on my book review blog (www.bugbugbooks.com) and on Amazon on 11/13/18!

Just like the title says, author Kate Frey gives 100 of the easiest and most important lessons she's learned in her many years of gardening. The book is divided into seven sections, and together they offer a "system of practices and design considerations that address every aspect of gardening." The sections cover:

1) Design (paths, seating, color combinations, etc.)
2) Planting Advice (plant for your region, weather, and location).
3) Soil (how to identify the soil you have and then amend it)
4) Water (conserve, use drip irrigation, don't plant plants that can't realistically grow under the water conditions you currently have)
5) Be a Good Garden Parent (deadhead, divide plants, don't let weeds go to seed)
6) Attract Birds, Bees, and Butterflies (attract insects with specific plants, water features, etc.)
7) Create a Garden of Earthly Delights (how to evoke emotion and create community through plants)

Most of the info in this book is basic, and if you're already an experienced gardener, the advice may not rock your world. But I still found some new-to-me helpful hints that I will definitely use in the coming seasons. My favorites:

***Plant in groups no bigger than three. I always hear "plant in groups of three," but this is the first time I've heard that clumps of 4+ plants don't look that great.
***Plant smaller plants. Apparently, it's easier on plants to buy them small so they can grow root systems adapted to your specific growing environment. A bigger plant at the nursery may be more established and stronger where it is, but once that plant moves to a new environment, it will have trouble adjusting.
***Mulch most plants once a year. I was always unsure about how many times to mulch, but now I know.
***Use cardboard covered with one to three inches of mulch in the fall. It helps protect plants while putting nutrients back into the soil.

Ground Rules is a fun book. It's best for beginners, but more seasoned gardeners may find it useful, too. I'm in charge of the garden at my kid's school, and we have a lot of parent volunteers. I'm already thinking that this book would make a great thank-you gift for them.

Informative book divided into bite sized chunks, or "Rules'.
The Chapters I really enjoyed covered the following topics:
How to make your own compost
Being a Water Wise gardener
Saying no to Pollarding
Using Cardboard in the garden
I will purchase for library.

🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻

Ground Rules is a beautiful guide by expert gardener and designer Kate Frey, with 100 easy-to-follow lessons for growing a more luxurious garden. Frey shares vital steps for producing a healthy, thriving and gorgeous home garden, with tips on design, care, soil, water, attracting birds and butterflies, and much more. Brief lessons with lush photos make this a go-to resource for gardeners of all skill levels. 5/5

Pub Date 13 Nov 2018

Grateful to Timber Press and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are fully mine.

#GroundRules #NetGalley

If someone were just thinking about starting to garden, the knowledge contained in this book would be useful. I'm not sure a book is the right place to list these 100 rules for gardening, though. Each is described on a single page, in a paragraph or two at most, so the advice is pretty superficial. For a beginner, that may be a good thing so as not to overwhelm, but if someone were to invest in this book, it would become too simplistic for them in a year or two. Photos included with nearly every "rule" are helpful visual aids and provide great ideas for design for a beginning gardener. Nicely designed book, but I'm not sure it would be worth the investment to a beginning gardener.

Not only is this book beautiful to look at with amazing photos, but the text makes wonderful reading. This book has a very holistic approach to gardening, just reading it makes me feel wonderful. I really love this book. Although written with America gardens in mind, it can easily be adapted to any part of the world, just change the birdlife, and native plants as required or not.
An organic book like no other.

I love to garden, especially with flowers. It’s just as relaxing as reading, and it’s fun and rewarding to watch it all grow and flower. All of my grandparents, great aunts and uncles, were/are gardeners, as are my parents, and I like to think I know a few things about gardening, too, but I have so much to learn.

Ground Rules is filled with simple tips like how to select your plants, how you might design an area, to watering guidelines, and everything in between. It is written in an approachable, easy-to-read style, and is filled with colorful and inspiring pictures. What I loved most was seeing visual examples of the types of plants recommended in the narrative.

I will be buying a copy of Ground Rules, so that I can incorporate a few tips each season. This would also make an excellent coffee table book.

Thank you to Timber Press for the ARC. Ground Rules will be published on November 13, 2018.

If your looking for a book to help you develop a luscious garden then this book is for you. The author includes details on paring plants, developing nutritious soil, and how to water plants to keep them healthy in the summer heat. The author also includes tips on how to maximize plants for birds and insects. I used the tips from this book to create a butterfly garden and I'm enjoying the color from the flowers and butterflies.

This was a cute book that would be a great gift for a gardener but it is definitely more novelty than useful. It's filled with anecdotes and general knowledge but isn't organized in any special way to make it educational or easily referenced for ongoing needs.

If you're looking for a gardening book with absolutely stunning photographs, this is the book for you.
If you're looking for a gardening book that is heavy on theory, this is the book for you.
If you're looking for a gardening book with actionable, step-by-step practical ideas, this is not the book you're looking for.

Short rules for the beginner gardener. I liked the readability and could see this being a coffee book easily. Beautiful photos. I really enjoyed the plant recommendations especially. Moderate to expert gardeners will not find much new but may enjoy the photos. I would definitely check out more Kate Frey.