Brad Finkle’s new book is entitled Holiday Hero: A Man’s Manual for Holiday Lighting, but if there’s a woman crazy enough to climb a ladder in the dead of winter with a string of Christmas lights in her grip and thus risk death in multiple ways (falling, electrocution, hypothermia), far be it from me to dissuade her. Decorating one’s home for Christmas can be an obsession, with most men possessing some degree of desire to turn their home into Disneyland; what we’ve lacked until now is a guidebook. A 20-year decorated veteran (his displays have won numerous awards), Finkle shows you, step by step, how to turn your yard into a photon-filled wonderland. The key, he says, is planning. Starting with a rundown of what’s available (the variety of holiday lighting is astounding), he shows decorating novices how to work up a plan, what to put where, and how to go about getting it up. He then gives us a dozen possible layouts, ranging from a simple, but elegant display to a complex set-up that would make a Vegas casino proud. Finkle concludes with some easy tips for removal and storage. As a jaded longtime holiday decorator, I thought I knew it all, but I have to admit that I learned a few things from Holiday Hero. You will too.

How often have you paged through a beautiful, glossy-paged garden book and gone away frustrated with your own meager efforts? Spreading vistas and great banks of bedded-out tropicals may be glorious, but they’re certainly not achievable in my garden. Or, most likely, in yours. Don’t you wish that someone would balance those beautiful photographs with applications for home gardeners? This is exactly what the Prince of Wales and Stephanie Donaldson have done in The Elements of Organic Gardening. Although the royal gardens are of a startling scale and grandeur, with flocks of gardeners flitting to and fro, this book explains the earth-friendly approach used in managing them and gives ideas for achieving sustainability in smaller ones.

Prince Charles has been widely recognized for his deep concern for the natural world, and The Elements of Organic Gardening demonstrates how this concern manifests itself in the landscapes around his homes. Ornamentals mingle with edibles in joyous profusion, while troops of Indian Runner ducks parade through in a comic ballet. And the valuable text breaks down the principles behind these gardens’ maintenance. Throughout, the book’s pages are brightened with handsome photographs by renowned garden photographers Andrew Lawson and David Rowley.

Few home gardeners will be able to achieve the grand effects illustrated here, but The Elements of Organic Gardening offers practical advice on sustainability for even the smallest garden. Caleb Melchior gardens on a country estate in Perry County, Missouri.

If you’re looking for tips on packing the perfect picnic basket or a refresher on how to play croquet, you’re in luck. Need to repair wicker furniture or perhaps build a lean-to? You’re all set: Suzanne Brown’s Summer: A User’s Guide lives up to its name. Brown has created a go-to book that surely will delight domestic divas, as well as hapless sorts who fantasize about creating the Perfect Summer Experience but aren’t sure how to go about it. The author’s voice is a friendly one; for the most part, she pulls off delivering suggestions and instructions without sounding patronizing, though the text does get a bit precious here and there (margaritas are sunshine in a glass and Reefs are the Rolls Royce of flip-flops. ). Overall, though, Brown seems earnest in her mission: She’s summered at lovely spots up and down the East Coast, and she wants readers to have as much fun and create as many delightful memories as she has.

Summer features page after page of color photos of enticing summer foods, wholesome activities and idyllic scenes. In addition, the how-to sections use helpful step-by-step line drawings to aid in identifying animal tracks or making a beach-towel pillow. No detail goes unshared: there are recipes for food and drink, music and movie playlists, and gardening tips. Essays offering a historical perspective on everything from baseball to toasting marshmallows are enlivened by the author’s personal musings and ensure that the book can be enjoyed as a cover-to-cover read as well as a reference guide.

Florence Broadhurst was a glamorous wallpaper designer born in Queensland, Australia, in 1899. She also was a dancer named Bobby in 1920s Shanghai and, later that decade, a London socialite named Madame Pellier. In the 1960s and ’70s, Broadhurst settled into the role of artist and designer. She presided over her Sydney studio until 1977, when she was murdered; no one was ever convicted of the crime. It’s fitting, then, that journalist Helen O’Neill’s biography, Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret &andamp; Extraordinary Lives, depicts a woman devoted to reinvention and fabulousness. Nearly 100 of Broadhurst’s vivid, large-scale silkscreened patterns appear in the book. They aren’t for the faint of heart: Covering walls with the lush Florentine Tapestry or the pop-alicious Turnabouts requires commitment and a sense of adventure. Even as Broadhurst’s work continues to sell (often in the form of fabrics for dresses and linens), her design skills and ethics draw questions. Nevertheless, with its clever silkscreened cover with embossed wrap-around, this book will look smashing on a coffee table.

As the title promises, 52 Weekend Makeovers: Easy Projects to Transform Your Home Inside and Out is a DIYer’s delight. Projects range from painting trim to de-cluttering the laundry room to building a barbecue-ready patio. The introductory section provides a list of must-have implements for indoor and outdoor work, plumbing-kit recommendations, and more. Step-by-step instructions are accompanied by large, close-up photos that should instill confidence, even in tile-grouting or shelf-installation novices. 52 Weekend Makeovers has sidebars galore, including the preemptive What Can Go Wrong and Safety First, and the acquisitiveness-inspiring Cool Tools. Readers who like comparing the shortest vs. the quickest route on MapQuest.com will appreciate the Do It Right vs. Do It Fast options. This book doesn’t focus solely on building how-tos, though; it addresses color, design and style as well. In the wainscot chapter, several photos illustrate what beadboard might look like in a cool-hued bathroom or a sunroom with a built-in bench. However, no matter how clear the photos are, or how simple the instructions seem, take this to heart: Preparation is key to the success of any job. . . . And don’t forget to call for help when you need it.

You may recognize JoAnne (JoJo) Liebeler’s name she’s hosted and/or produced several home-centric shows, such as HGTV’s Room for Change and TLC’s Home Savvy. Her television experience, plus her work as a comic performer and writer, gives Do It Herself: Everything You Need to Know to Fix, Maintain, and Improve Your Home an approachable feel. The book was produced by women, for women! and the author photo shows Liebeler using her toolbox as a pedicure table. Of course, femininity can coexist with construction tools and sawdust; thus, this book is packed with plain talk about everything from radon detectors to replacing a ceiling fixture. And that’s Liebe-ler’s point: Understanding how house systems work gives you knowledge. Knowledge gives you power. Power enables you to do things on your own and save money. Up-front information about home-improvement endeavors how long they’ll take, must-have tools and maintenance gives readers an idea of what they’re in for. Liebeler’s humorous anecdotes and conversational tone keep things fun and confidence-inspiring.

Sharon Hanby-Robie, QVC’s home decor expert and frequent on-air personality, shares her 30 years of interior design expertise in Decorating Without Fear: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Home You Love. She recommends a personal, thoughtful approach: Your home should tell the story of your life. . . . I want you to learn to trust your instincts and follow your heart. The book’s language may veer into clichŽ territory, but Hanby-Robie’s principles are sound: Before embarking on a design project, it’s wise to consider which styles are appealing and appropriate, how the rooms function, where the light falls and other essentials. She offers suggestions for making rooms more efficient, as well as techniques for rendering challenging areas (ceiling too tall? space too open?) more livable. And it’s refreshing that the loads of color photos including plenty of before-and-afters are of livable, not-too-fancy rooms, rather than the shots of palatial homes and fussy furniture found in many interior design books.

Reading Decorating Without Fear does require commitment: The text is plentiful, but so is the good advice. And isn’t it better to spend more time sussing out what works now, rather than scraping off an unfortunate wallpaper choice later?

Readers who appreciate the singular allure of a chaise longue or the architectural lines of a 1950s ranch home will savor the eye candy in Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams’ Let’s Get Comfortable: How to Furnish and Decorate a Welcoming Home. But let’s be clear: this book is not resting on its gorgeous laurels. Gold and Williams, partners in their eponymous 18-year-old furniture company, have created a sourcebook for a welcoming home for you, your family, your guests, and of course, your pets. (The of course is an homage to company mascot Lulu, an English bulldog.) Their efforts are successful: Inviting photos illustrate how to create a variety of looks in a single room by employing slipcovers, rearranging sectional furniture or considering cherry wood vs. antiqued mirror finishes. Clever copy explains why wood plus white is always appealing, and elucidates why a settee might work when a sofa won’t do.

This book’s tips for straightforward yet high-impact updates make it an excellent resource for readers who seek insight as to why certain elements work better than others, or how color can evoke a feeling or reaction. It is also a spot-on gift for the interior design junkie you know and love.

It’s not quite a life list, of the sort that birders keep, but 1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die feeds the same sort of drive to go out and look. Its immediate effect on me: I really, really want to go to Kyoto. Even at just shy of a thousand pages, 1001 Gardens does not aim to be encyclopedic; general editor Rae Spencer-Jones marshals garden profiles by dozens of garden experts (horticulturalists, designers and writers among them) into a collection organized geographically, a benefit for readers plotting a grand garden tour. As you might expect, that team approach gives some eclectic results: How else a could a garden gnome reserve in the UK end up on the same must see list as Versailles? I’d argue that’s part of the charm of 1001 Gardens, all the better for opening the book at a random page and following the path where it leads. Do note that the entries and appendices offer only the slimmest of details on the logistics of actually visiting the gardens so if you mean to travel beyond your armchair, consider the book an invitation to dig further, in a volume on a regional garden style, or in a travel guidebook. The same goes for the photos they’re only glimpses, but as alluring as a peek through a gap in a garden wall.

In my previous garden, I had been doing my best to colonize the grass for more ornamental plantings. I’ve been in gardens that had already evolved a long way in that direction I’m thinking in particular of one garden in North Carolina where what was once a sweep of suburban lawn had evolved into a labyrinth of berms and island beds. But most of us don’t want to do without a lawn entirely, and most gardeners have to share their turf (so to speak) with romping dogs, soccer-playing children or lawn sports fans (croquet or badminton, anyone?) Paul Tukey’s message in The Organic Lawn Care Manual is that a lawn doesn’t need to be chemically dependent any more than a flower or vegetable bed does. You might not expect to hear right plant, right place in a lawn care book, but there it is. The essentials for a healthy organic lawn, Tukey suggests: Choose the right grass, water wisely, mow well. Beyond that, the same concepts apply whether you’re cultivating tulips, tomatoes or turf, and we’d all do well to listen. Nurture the soil; it will nurture your plants, and they in turn will nurture you.

Where you garden matters enormously, of course, for what you can grow, and how well. The Pacific Northwest is a Shangri-la of sorts for gardeners, and although that’s where co-authors Susan Carter, Carrie Becker and Bob Lilly gained their vast collective garden expertise, I’m pleased to say that there’s no gloating to be found in Perennials: The Gardener’s Reference not even about being able to grow Meconopsis only the voices of hands-on gardeners who know and love their plants. Together, they have assembled an accessible, information-packed treasury of garden-worthy plants, more than 2,700 of them. An essay on general maintenance complements plant-specific recommendations in the A-to-Z directory, and accompanying lists offer other ways into the data. There are suggested collections of plants for specialty gardens (spring ephemerals, meadow plants, plants too tall for words ), and my favorite, a list which sorts the plants from the directory into their plant families. That list, I think, has the potential to be very useful, especially for gardeners looking to meet less familiar cousins of plants they already know and grow. I also love the user-friendly tables that accompany each entry, which chart hardiness zones and heights and spreads, details on flowers and foliage, and even notes on the quirks and particularities of individual species and cultivars exactly the sort of information you need to choose among them. The photography in Perennials is fabulous, too. This book is an appealing new acquaintance which appears quite likely to grow into a very best friend.

Big Ideas for Small Gardens has its roots on the West Coast, thousands of miles away from the Haywards’ New England, and, just as a plant might be, is adapted to a notably different niche in the gardening world. Authors Emily Young and Dave Egbert present a very visual take on translating large-scale garden schemes into smaller quarters. The heart of the book is an abundance of inspiring photos, all of which are helpfully and thoroughly captioned. But there’s plenty of garden smarts beyond the eye candy, and in fact, if you can manage not to be distracted by the gorgeous pictures, the section Big Concepts offers a lucid overview of essential landscape design principles that are relevant to any garden, of any size, anywhere.

Katherine Whiteside wants you to enjoy your garden. I’d imagine she’d be the perfect companion to have along while touring some breathtaking garden that sparks curiosity and envy in equal measure, one that makes you say I’d like to try that, but I couldn’t possibly . . . Whiteside’s reply, I’d guess: Yes, you can. The Way We Garden Now: 41 Pick-and-Choose Projects for Planting Your Paradise Large or Small is full of fine advice and comprehensible projects for beginners and for gardeners who are ready to branch out. While you certainly don’t have to march through the projects sequentially, they’re presented in a wise order (design appears early in the process, for example), and paced for the long haul. These aren’t instant makeovers; Whiteside is willing to budget months for opening new beds, and gives a two-year plan for installing paths, for example. And any garden how-to that ranks keeping a journal near the top of a list of important garden tasks is already well on its way to earning a gold star from me. What’s particularly now about this book, I think, is the way it does more than show and tell you what to do; it begins with why. Whiteside introduces each project by asking What’s the payoff? and her own experience shines through the answers, to inspire and motivate the aspiring gardener.