The Complete Guide to Creative Landscapes : Designing, Building, and Decorating Your Outdoor Home (Black & Decker Home Improvement Library)

The Complete Guide to Creative Landscapes represents a new, innovative way to look at the yard and landscape. Up until now, landscapes have been considered mostly ornamental, and average homeowners were thought to be incapable of designing and creating a great landscape. This book will change all that. In refreshingly simple and practical language, The Complete Guide to Creative Landscapes teaches the seven secrets of good landscape design, shows how to plan a stylish landscape that meets practical family needs, and teaches readers how to build a functional, beautiful landscape. With this innovative method, readers will learn how to create a new or "remodeled" landscape consisting of outdoor "rooms" dedicated to various lifestyle activities. A landscape built using this method will be attractive and stylish-but more important, it will provide practical outdoor living space. In addition, readers will learn how to put the finishing touches on a new landscape, thanks to comprehensive plans and directions for more than 20 beautiful and ingenious garden ornaments-ranging from simple cedar planter boxes to elegant copper archways and trellises. Highlights: Includes more than 60 how-to projects that can be built with ordinary materials available at any home center. Each project includes complete directions and step-by-step photography. Includes a wide range of projects, from the very simple (creating a planting bed) to major hardscape features (building a retaining wall). Refreshingly simple and practical approach to the principles of landscape design-a book that is useful, not intimidating. The only "big book" of landscaping that includes a section on building garden ornaments. Innovative book design features an exciting blend of state-of-the-art color photography and elegant, hand-crafted illustrations. Contains a reference appendix, that includes helpful web sites, manufacturers, and an additional reading list. Also includes a complete index. Designing your outdoor home -- Design basics -- Principles -- Making plans -- Drawing plans -- Building your outdoor home -- Building basics -- Shaping -- Utilities -- Walls & ceilings -- Floors -- Decorating your outdoor home -- Water features -- Accent pieces -- Garden furnishings -- Trellises & arbors -- Basic techniques. It's time to throw away your old landscape ideas and begin thinking of your yard as an outdoor home-an integrated living space with various "rooms" that serve different activities. A guide to designing and financing unique landscapes from preparation to construction includes suggestions on integrating such features as plants, lighting, and waterfalls.