The No Work Garden: Getting the Most Out of Your Garden with the Least Amount of Work Paperback – January 1, 2003

I love the tone and the approach of this book. I've just read some books by Ruth Stout (a previous generation's evangelist of lazy gardening), and I must say I find these lazy gardening books delightfully written, with a good dash of wit along with practical advice.Flowerdew does a good job of combining overall approaches (for example, advocating no-dig gardening over the sweat and toil of tillage) with very specific recommendations and tips (like putting small bottles over little seedlings to protect them and make weeding easier).If the book were a bit more systematically organized, it could make a better reference for my gardening library. But it was useful enough that, after reading the book at my local library, I decided to buy a copy from Amazon.

I've read about "Lasagna Gardening" and "Square Foot Gardening", and all about Ruth Stout's methods. But this book has them all beat! It is so filled with practical ideas for making gardening not just easy, but productive and beautiful! I checked this out from the library and after just a day or two with it, I knew I *had* to have my own copy! Everyone interested in gardening should read this book; gardening does *not* need to be difficult!

Very helpful. Great ideas for the low work garden.

Best garden set up and gardening book. I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to do the work up front and enjoy the rest of their years with bare maintenance.

Love gardening, love this book, great ideas, arrived on time, completely satisfied...

good

Lazy mans guide to the garden

If you've ever done gardening you know the title is a little misleading - of course you need to do some work to have a garden! Bob raises some good points about where you want to expend your effort to get the most out of the time you spend, and guides you through rethinking why you are doing what you are doing and if that's the best use of your time. I really enjoyed this book.My favorite part of the book is where he points out that your kids are more likely to eat fruit than vegetables, so why spend all that time in the garden raising spinach when the kids would more happily eat strawberries.Caveat for US buyers, he's talking about gardening in UK, so some of the plants he says are easy - aren't over here, and vice versa.

I like Bob Flowerdew's gardening books, both his personal, entertaining, fluid writing style and his common-sensical, healthy, environment-friendly approach to gardening.He cuts through a lot of myth, and suggests simply not doing certain things that everyone assumes need doing because everyone else is doing them.The 'no work garden' doesn't involve 'no work'. If you take the title literally, you'll find this book a disappointment. Instead, the author recommends shortcuts and methods which need work but save time in the long term.He is very knowledgeable, and his authority comes through in his writing, without ever being patronising. It's like having a gardening-experienced neighbour who shares what he knows and passes on tips across the garden fence.The practical, helpful approach based on personal experience and extensive subject knowledge, coupled with a friendly, entertaining style make Bob Flowerdew's books - including this one - favourites on my gardening bookshelf.

Comments have already been made about the 'no-work' in the title. Yes, it is misleading. Bob's approach is more to encourage the reader to assess what it is they want from a garden and then focus on these aspects of gardening rather than tedious chores. Some of his insights are surprising - I hadn't realised that fruit growing was so much less work than most vegetable production even though I had instincively gravitated more towards fruits (not very successfully). Mr Flowerdew is very opinionated and can be irritating, but that is part of the fun of reading this book. While he makes a valid point about quick make-over gardens on TV shows being unlikely to be practical in the long run, there is probably more to be discussed about how intelligent landscaping design could create a very nearly work free garden. Bob's focus is on more traditional gardening with lawns, borders and kitchen gardens.His writing style is entertaining and readable, although he does seem reluctant to use commas. He provides good illustrations of some subjects such as his syphon systems, while relying on words to describe other ideas without diagrams. I am pleased to have a copy of this book bought cheaply from the Marketplace.

Great condition.Easy to read, print various helpful photos & clear diagrams .Bob F. has his own style of writing,however this holds real value to learn by.This will be helpful for a no-nonsense gardener starting out,& gardeners with less time or needing low effort maintenance.Includes many practical recycling ideas & examples . Good for making the best of space available &/or creating a garden quickly with mixed planting to best effect, visually, & productively.Simple ideas for the production of good healthy plants,without breaking the bank,or your back.Nature at it's best with a lot of helpful tips .Great value bought like this.

My garden has not had much love for the last decade or so. This year, I decided that I would slowly start clearing it up and have taken to reading as many books on the subject as I can find. I have to say this book offers a lot of advice, of both of the practical and side of gardening and enjoying the garden types. A much better read than a lot of the other books I have read!

As already observed by others, I think that you need to enjoy Bob's strongly expressed views on certain things to do with the approach of others to the same problems. I find him a bit intolerant and, for me, this detracted form the book a bit.Of course one cannot take away from Bob the fact that his knowledge is extensive, but sometimes reading it is like listening to him talking. Personally, I would appreciate the contents better if they were more rigorously edited.However, the concept is great and a lot of the ideas are very helpful. Overall I enjoyed reading it and will be referring back to it in future.