Down and dirty! 43 fun & funky first-time projects & activities to get you gardening. By Ellen Zachos, published by Storey published.

This is a book to fuel your creativity outside. Extending your creativity to different areas of your house and life is a wonderful way to fuel your creative life. If you are in a rut with writing, designing, making art or craft then doing something different can often kick start those creative energies. Giving your brain a burst of new ideas can push you in wonderful directions. And there is nothing so good as getting outside and doing some exercise, going for walk, enjoying the sunshine and getting into your garden. If you are lucky enough to have a garden, then making it a creative haven is healthy for your mind and body. It can be a serene meditative zone, or a fun energetic exciting area to play. Whatever your garden style or need just the act of creating and watching something grow is beneficial for you.

This book is a good start, get your garden inspiration going and create a wonderful creative energy inspiring space. This book is about plants and has technical stuff on gardening, but more than that it is full of ideas to create that special garden zone. Ideas like garden sculpture, using recycled materials in your garden, play gardens and dinosaur gardens for the kids, night gardens with interesting lighting, gardens for flowers, gardens for winter, gardens for food. Its all there, whatever your thing.

An easy to understand book, if you have never picked up a shovel or opened a seed packet, don’t worry - this book goes through the basics to get your started. Experimenting and having fun in the garden is the key goal behind this book. Living in Australia means that a lot of the plants and planting times in this book are not applicable to me, but this is almost irrelevant, if I want a book about what plants to plant in my area, I will get a technical plant manual (and I have plenty of those) but this book is not really about what plants to plant when, its more a general overview of how to get certain effects or what type of plants will be good for your different purposes.

A few things in this book grabbed my attention, such as the bits on children and gardening - there are some fun gardening activities that you can do with kids like growing strawberries, making scarecrows, special cat garden, and a garden for the senses. There are also recipes to use some of your wonderful garden produce - like elderflower champagne and blueberry sauce. As well as information on community gardens, seed sharing, and buying local. This book is a creative pick me up to re-energise your soul and body.

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