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"Is it possible to have a lush, luxurious garden if your landscaping skills and schedule leave something to be desired? A crop of smart books just may help you coax beautiful blooms from your beds\u2014and still have time to stop and smell the roses. I always start the gardening season full of ambition. I sketch out new plans in my graph-paper notebook and make lists of plants to buy. Then, I shop. This is my favorite part: piling my cart high with young perennials to fill in the holes where last year&amp;#039;s attempts failed, and lush annuals to distract from this year&amp;#039;s inevitable shortcomings. Planting is fun, too; and even mulching that first time\u2014when I&amp;#039;m done, my beds and borders are neat and weed-free, and so full of potential. And then, reality strikes. The plants (well, some of them, at least) actually start to grow. But so do the weeds. And the warm weather brings not just a lawn to cut\u2014and dandelions to pull\u2014but weekends filled with soccer and Little League and birthday parties and the opening of the town pool and the sheer pleasure of spending the days doing anything but taking care of the garden. So within a month of that flurry of planning-buying-planting, life is at odds with landscaping, and I find myself frustrated with my imperfect plan, tired of watering, sick of weeding, and wishing the lawn were a nice patch of gravel. Sound familiar? Anyway, this year I&amp;#039;ve determined to do things differently. First, I&amp;#039;m going to spend the early spring working on our poor excuse for a lawn (more on that in another post), to get it on the right track earlier than usual. Second, I&amp;#039;m only planting low-maintenance varieties this year. I&amp;#039;m thinking herbs in pots instead of water-hungry annuals. I&amp;#039;m going to mulch better, and sooner, too\u2014to keep those weeds at bay. And I&amp;#039;m going to spend some time checking out books with a very specific theme: easy, time-saving gardening tricks for the time-pressed among us\u2014like the ones below. I thought you might find some time-saving inspiration here, too. Happy gardening!  Gardening In No Time: 50 Step-by-Step Projects and Inspirational Ideas by Tessa Evelegh, CICO Books; $25.  Easy Container Combos: Herbs and Flowers by Pamela Crawford, Color Garden Publishing; $20.  Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens, Storey Publishing; $20.  Easy Gardening by Miranda Beaufort and Jane Nicholas, Frances Lincoln; $23.  The New Low-Maintenance Garden: How to Have a Beautiful, Productive Garden and the Time to Enjoy It by Valerie Easton, Timber Press; $20.  50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants by Tracy DiSabato-Aust, Timber Press; $20.  How to Cheat at Gardening: Shameless Tricks for Growing Radically Simple Flowers, Veggies, Lawns, Landscaping and More by Jeff Bredenberg, Rodale Books; $19. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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