Garden planning and learning

Do you do your own garden planning and plant and dig by yourself? Or do you use professionals who make it all so ready that you just walk in and wait for your new garden starts to grow? What do you prefer the best book to get started? Has you mother (or somebody close) been a gardener and teached your all she (he) knows? Or have you learned all by yourself with help of garden books and magazines?

I've always done it myself or had someone do the tilling for me but I do the rest. My mother was a gardener and I did learn a great deal from her the rest I learned from books magazines or tv shows and experience. I have also admired someones garden when they are out in it and walk home with tons of local advice!

I do everything myself, except when the kids do the mowing. I'm mostly self-taught out of books, magazines and tv, but I've also taken a couple of courses (one on pruning, one on xeriscaping). I don't think there is any one "best book" - it depends on your climate, soil type, what you like to grow (veg, perennials, annuals, whatever) and what kind of space you have and stuff like that.

Made it up as I go along.

Admitedly over here we have much smaller gardens than on averge you do over there.

Started with grass and hedges from previous owners which I hated, so as we passed garden shops we bought things we liked the look of and ripped up hedge/grass to make space appropriately. If it dies we replaced with something else. Still very much a work in progress but much much better than we started with. Desipte owning a few gardening books I haven't read any of them. If a planet needs pampering in order to thrive it ain't going to live long in my garden anyway.

I got the gardening bug from both my parents. I do refer to books and enjoy reading about plant care etc.--even if I don't follow all the suggestions/rules. I agree with reading_fox--if a plant dies it just wasn't the right one for my garden. (That plant/planet typo provokes some interesting notions!)

My great discovery was I could hire a gardener to cut grass, weed, etc. and I could to the planting and fun stuff. I dig my beds and plant them along with windowboxes etc. The gardener doesn't touch the windowboxes and container plants or my vegetable and cutting beds. (Yikes, this sounds so grand--it's really a modest sized space.)

Time to dig up the dahlias and rip out the tomato vines. I need to get into the dirt!