Who cares what the neighbors think? Kiss My Aster is a hilarious, irreverent, interactive guide to designing an outdoor space that is exactly what you want. Combining entertaining illustrations with laugh-out-loud text, Amanda Thomsen lays out the many options for home landscaping and invites you to make the choices. Whether you want privacy hedges, elegant flower beds, a patio for partying, a food garden, a kids’ play space, a pond full of ducks, or all of the above, you’ll end up with a yard you’ll adore. Forget about doing it the "right" way: Do it your way!
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Review
Amanda Thomsen’s new book, Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Fantastic Yard Totally Tailored to You (Storey Publishing, January 2013) shakes up traditional garden book publishing. Steeped in rock and roll irreverence and sound horticultural knowledge, Amanda takes us on a journey that is practical, active, and full of energy.
(Leaf Magazine)A garden book for the age of graphic novels, in which wiseacre wordplay and cartoony illustrations make basic knowledge about plants and garden planning accessible to all. Behind it all is a landscaper and blogger who truly knows her stuff.
(Chicago Tribune)Entertaining and vibrant, Kiss My Aster goes beyond horticultural information and ideas and stirs creativity… By pairing the illustrations with handwritten-style fonts, a synergy in engendered that perfectly complements the witty text’s blend of practical tips and encouragement.
(Booklist)We all know trying to design your garden and keep your sanity can be a challenge. Thankfully there are experts full of comical gardening advice such as Amanda Thomsen who can successfully walk you through the steps to create a landscape tailored to your needs, wants, and style.
(BHG.com)Zany at times, Kiss My Aster is founded on sensible advice delivered in a way that makes the reader laugh, or at least snicker, with every page tuning.
(Free Press)Garden blogger and landscape designer Thomsen (Grocery Gardening)offers beginning gardening advice in a totally fresh way: This is a graphic guide aimed at newbie gardeners who may have cashed in their hipster chips for homeownership but haven't changed their style. The gardening basics – design, hardscape, soil, water, plant selection, care -- are covered with panache. Thomsen's voice has a sassy edge ("Getting bored with all this? Why not make a chore cootie catcher?", a real object for which there are instructions), and the full-color graphics by Am I Collective simply steal the show. The book is fittingly idiosyncratic, which will profoundly challenge any readers who prefer linear thinking, chapters that treat one subject at a time, and tables of contents that help a reader find something quickly. But the book is irresistibly flip-through and a thing of beauty that will help a new school of gardeners who don't want to do it granny's way. Simple but revolutionary, it's an amusing new way to offer Gardening 101.
(Publishers Weekly)Her iconoclastic, and drenchingly colorful, new book, "Kiss My Aster", is her manifesto, her plea and promise that gardening should be one grand adventure. And, yes, you can still wow the neighbors."
(Chicago Tribune)Review
Garden writing has been far too uptight for way too long. Which may explain why a lot of young homeowners steer themselves and their pricey iced coffees clear of the garden section on date night at Barnes & Noble.
Hal-o-freakin'-Lou-ya, this volume pokes stodgy ol' garden bookishness in the eye.
Amanda Thomsen brings her readers not only a irreverent, quirky, and flirty read but also a customizable, user-friendly template to build the yard of their dreams. That's right. Beneath Thomsen's witty word play--not to mention the whimsical illustrations by Am I Collective--there's a solid, pragmatic, and sensible scheme that teaches newbie gardeners how to create (and tend!) an authentic, one-of-a-kind landscape.
The 'burbs may never be the same.
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars
17 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A funny, wry how-to gardening book
Dec 25 2012
By Virginia music lover
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If Dorothy Parker had written a beginners' guide to gardening, this would be it. Ms. Thomsen has a wry, sly wit. She also knows lots about gardening -- not just the flowers end, but the big stuff end as well.
This is an ideal book for the beginning gardener who does not want to read a boring gardening book. I am an advanced gardener, having owned a variety of homes over 30 years. And having made tons of basic mistakes over 30 years. This book aims to prevent those mistakes, such as planting trees too close to houses, not going with an overall plan, etc. (I bought the book because I follow Ms. Thomsen's humorous "Kiss My Aster" page on Facebook.) Even though I know lots about gardening, I still learned things from the book. She also got me to think more about the purpose of gardening. It's important to ask what you want to accomplish with a given space before you start (something I've always been bad at doing.) Besides looking nice, do you want to impress? Or is this mainly for privacy? I figure if I had had this book 30 years ago I would have saved a few thousand dollars and many hours of digging up mistakes.
The book is laid out in steps, so you can skip ahead if you know the basic basics. However, I didn't want to skip ahead at all because there is always some humor lurking somewhere on a page. And that is the key to this book, because you will read it end to end. The alternative is to buy a boring encyclopedia of gardening with lots of glossy pictures that you will never read, or will consult after it's too late. "Hey, honey, I think I know why our row of boxwoods died, and it's spelled d-o-g-p-e-e." Fitting with the overall theme, instead of glossy pictures, the book has cartoon-like drawings.
If I were pairing this book with another, it would be S.J. Perelman's Acres and Pains, which takes one through the hell of owning a country house.
This is an ideal book for the beginning gardener who does not want to read a boring gardening book. I am an advanced gardener, having owned a variety of homes over 30 years. And having made tons of basic mistakes over 30 years. This book aims to prevent those mistakes, such as planting trees too close to houses, not going with an overall plan, etc. (I bought the book because I follow Ms. Thomsen's humorous "Kiss My Aster" page on Facebook.) Even though I know lots about gardening, I still learned things from the book. She also got me to think more about the purpose of gardening. It's important to ask what you want to accomplish with a given space before you start (something I've always been bad at doing.) Besides looking nice, do you want to impress? Or is this mainly for privacy? I figure if I had had this book 30 years ago I would have saved a few thousand dollars and many hours of digging up mistakes.
The book is laid out in steps, so you can skip ahead if you know the basic basics. However, I didn't want to skip ahead at all because there is always some humor lurking somewhere on a page. And that is the key to this book, because you will read it end to end. The alternative is to buy a boring encyclopedia of gardening with lots of glossy pictures that you will never read, or will consult after it's too late. "Hey, honey, I think I know why our row of boxwoods died, and it's spelled d-o-g-p-e-e." Fitting with the overall theme, instead of glossy pictures, the book has cartoon-like drawings.
If I were pairing this book with another, it would be S.J. Perelman's Acres and Pains, which takes one through the hell of owning a country house.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Most Innovative Design Book in Years
April 23 2013
By Jean A. Van Krevelen
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
There's a reason why Gen X and Y are not that interested in gardening. It's because most gardening books, shows and radio are for the over fifty crowd. Now, don't get excited, I am fast approaching fifty, and there's nothing wrong with liking more traditional content.
BUT, younger folks find it stuffy, boring and definitely not funny.
Amanda Thomsen and her publisher decided to step outside the box and write an innovative, fun to read design book that is helpful for newbie gardeners...and for old hands who want a fresh perspective.
To say that I love this book would be an understatement. Do yourself a favor and read it. It's like Highlights for adults!
BUT, younger folks find it stuffy, boring and definitely not funny.
Amanda Thomsen and her publisher decided to step outside the box and write an innovative, fun to read design book that is helpful for newbie gardeners...and for old hands who want a fresh perspective.
To say that I love this book would be an understatement. Do yourself a favor and read it. It's like Highlights for adults!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love this book
Dec 26 2012
By E. L.
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I am not much of a gardner and got this book to help in planning to transform my yard from the skurge of the Hood, to the most lovely and quriky one. Easy to read with lots of great ideas. Love you on the web too!
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 17 reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
