Contain Yourself: 101 Fresh Ideas for Fantastic Container Gardens

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Resource for the Novice Container Gardener
Review: Contain Yourself offers a clever way to teach gardeners to break out of the "marigold/impatien" cycle through creative "recipes" for container gardens featuring more color, height and texture than most novices are able to do on their own.

By presenting the material in this fashion, Ouellet gives the reader the tools to ultimately be able to create his or her own container masterpieces by using portions of multiple recipes. In essence, the reader learns new techniques as the book progresses. Once the basic techniques are learned, gardeners should be able to design beautiful gardens on their own.

The book includes care instructions for containers (which need more frequent watering than traditional gardens) and information on the growing habits of the plants used in the designs. While it's true that there is not a huge variety of containers used (as noted by another reviewer), how many households have endless supplies of different containers? I rather like the lesson taught that any one container may be used in many different ways.

More seasoned gardeners might find the text and instruction somewhat remedial. Even so, it's a beautiful book with excellent content for anyone who wishes to learn more about expanding the horizons of traditional gardening.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book!
Review: Contain Yourself offers a clever way to teach gardeners to break out of the "marigold/impatien" cycle through creative "recipes" for container gardens featuring more color, height and texture than most novices are able to do on their own.

By presenting the material in this fashion, Ouellet gives the reader the tools to ultimately be able to create his or her own container masterpieces by using portions of multiple recipes. In essence, the reader learns new techniques as the book progresses. Once the basic techniques are learned, gardeners should be able to design beautiful gardens on their own.

The book includes care instructions for containers (which need more frequent watering than traditional gardens) and information on the growing habits of the plants used in the designs. While it's true that there is not a huge variety of containers used (as noted by another reviewer), how many households have endless supplies of different containers? I rather like the lesson taught that any one container may be used in many different ways.

More seasoned gardeners might find the text and instruction somewhat remedial. Even so, it's a beautiful book with excellent content for anyone who wishes to learn more about expanding the horizons of traditional gardening.

Rating:
Summary: Easy and beautiful!
Review: I'm not one of those gardeners who can spout off the botanical names of the plants. I just like things to look good. But I also like to do it myself, so when I found Contain Yourself, I thought "Maybe I can find some ideas for the planters and window boxes around my house." Because admit it, it you're like me, you depend too much on geraniums for the sunny spots and impatients for the shady ones. Kerstin's book shows me what to do with all those cool new plants I've been seeing in the garden shops. My new favorites? Wave petunia, verbena, bidens, helichrysum and chalibrachoa (I'llhave to check my spelling on this one). It looks like a miniature petunia. The authors designs look great all summer long and even now - my neighbors are coming to ME for advice! I tell them to buy the book - I gave one to my sister!

Rating:
Summary: Easy and beautiful!
Review: This book has a catchy title. The subtitle "101 fresh ideas for container gardens" is more specific, if rather unrealistic. I'll take the writer's word for it that there are 101 container gardens described in this book, but "fresh ideas" they are not. They feature fairly basic containers filled with the likes of petunias, verbena,and osteospermums, with a grass or phormium to give height and ivy, lotus vine or ajuga as a trailer. The result is the kind of thing you see on sale at Home Depot or one of the other big box retailers.

Each "recipe" for a container design has a colour photo of the mature planting, a planting diagram and notes on the plants, containers and care. These notes are repetitive because of the limited range of containers and plants.

The writer is described as president of a marketing communications firm for the horticulture field. The marketing is more in evidence here than the horticulture.

Rating:
Summary: Contain Yourself by Kerstin Ouellet
Review: This book is an excellent reference for plant enthusiasts.
It begins by teaching how to design container gardens.
A strength of the presentation is that each garden variety
is depicted in full color. The author emphasizes the importance
of drainage in maintaining a container garden. Comparative
profiles are depicted for a variety of plants. i.e. Geranium,
fountain grass and a host of wonderful garden varieties

This book would be very helpful for amateur gardeners or
persons seeking to design a garden for the first time.
Both the descriptions and full-color pictures are very helpful
in replicating the plant varieties shown.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book!
Review: This is a delightful gardening book. It is easy to read and understand. The ideas will definitely keep my container garden looking great year after year. A keeper!