If the formal lines of Versailles, Sissinghurst Castle or the gardens of Kyoto fertilize your horticultural aspirations, then the imaginative gardens in The New Garden Paradise: Great Private Gardens of the World will raise the bar for your backyard. Edited by the incomparable Dominique Browning, essayist and editor-in-chief of House &andamp; Garden magazine, the book declares that the last decade has produced exceptionally talented and progressive landscape architects and designers and supports that premise with detailed, breathless text and phenomenal photos of 35 personal paradises full of tangible innovation that blooms and sways in the breeze. While pretentious design descriptors like lush and sensual, ruthlessly discriminating and tour de force are somewhat distracting, the gardens themselves remain as mysterious and elusive as a good novel or poem. Caught in various moods and seasons and organized into categories including New Classicism, Personal Visions and the Cottage Garden Reinvented, these gardens ultimately surpass words to stir the pure feeling, according to Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, that people long for.

The store that stained the American home espresso now gives its fans even more to drool over in Pottery Barn Home. Basically one long, luxurious PB catalog, this coffee table (in espresso wood, of course) book is a guide to the clean, contemporary look that has made the store and its mix-and-match furniture and accessories a hit. Broken down into typical living areas of the house, more than 600 glossy photographs illustrate a variety of room dŽcor options in the modern to contemporary country vein, with sidebars that dissect the design decisions for easy imitation. New homeowners and amateur decorators can learn the basics in back-of-book sections on selecting furniture, fittings, fabrics and window treatments; determining room layouts; and using color, texture and pattern in interiors. But the book functions best as an aspirational blueprint to modern, yet relaxed and accessible interior design.

Learning how to redecorate a room is one thing, but what if your home needs basic improvements and additions? In Room for Improvement: Change Your Home! Enhance Your Life! With Tools, Tips, and Inspiration from Barbara K, New York businesswoman and entrepreneur Barbara Kavovit shows you how to make home repair (and home maintenance) simple. Geared specifically toward women, Room for Improvement teaches readers how to take control of repair projects. With easy-to-follow instructions on how to fix a scratched hardwood floor or replace a broken windowpane, and fun, simple projects like installing a mantelshelf and hanging a ceiling pot rack, Barbara K shows you how to make the most of your home. Brimming with useful information, Room for Improvement proves that home repair should be empowering, not intimidating. Abby Plesser studies English at Vanderbilt University.

TV personality and designer guru Todd Oldham shares his expertise and flair for refurbishing in Handmade Modern: Mid-Century Inspired Projects for Your Home. Oldham’s book is a celebration of nesting and encourages homeowners to update their living spaces in the modernist tradition. Complete with information on major modernist architects and designers of the 20th century, Handmade Modern is as much a reference book as it is a how-to manual. Oldham includes a helpful list of tool box basics and provides step-by-step instructions for each project. With beautiful photographs of each room, Oldham gives do-it-yourselfers the opportunity to update individual pieces or revitalize an entire home. Abby Plesser studies English at Vanderbilt University.

If the task of redecorating seems incredibly daunting, start simple that’s the advice Douglas Wilson of TLC’s immensely popular Trading Spaces provides in his first book, Doug’s Rooms: Transforming Your Space One Room at a Time. Wilson teaches readers how to arrange furniture, adjust lighting, manage clutter and, most importantly, how to use their own ideas to update their homes. Using his kick start method, Wilson shows you how to build a room around one thing you love whether it’s a favorite photo, a piece of fabric or a sculpture. And with 10 unique sample rooms on display, Wilson demonstrates how he used simple concepts to create sophisticated rooms. So whether you’re looking to accent a particular room or start from the ground up, Doug’s Rooms is an accessible, inventive resource.

Abby Plesser studies English at Vanderbilt University.

Admit it: if you’re like most homeowners and renters, the thought of splashing color on your walls petrifies you. Why risk ruining a perfectly good off-white room with a green gone bad or a too-intense red? Well, Debbie Travis, the host of HGTV’s The Painted House and Facelift, is here with some great ideas to beat the lack-of-color blues. In her new book, Debbie Travis’ Facelift: Solutions to Revitalize Your Home, Travis breaks down design ideas according to mood. With detailed instructions, she helps you choose the right mood and then redecorate a room or a series of rooms accordingly. Whether you’re hoping to develop a calm, cheerful, nostalgic or dramatic mood for your home, Travis has the color palettes, fabrics, furnishings and most of all, the encouragement you need to make drastic changes. Abby Plesser studies English at Vanderbilt University.

Gardens look most natural when they complement a house style rather than fight it. In Homescaping: Designing Your Landscape to Match Your Home, garden writer Anne Halpin explores the design relationship between classic garden types and common residential architecture styles. Halpin helps homeowners coordinate house and garden with advice on choosing patios, decks, walls, lighting, outdoor structures, furniture and water features that echo a home’s personality. She also recommends key plants that signal each garden “feel,” including formal, desert and meadow.

Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville who describes herself as a journeyman gardener.

Those who run on impulse to the nearest garden supply center should pull up a lawn chair and plan first with New Complete Home Landscaping. This guide to designing and constructing landscape and hardscape elements is traditional in look and scope but packed with useful information. More than 950 photographs and watercolor illustrations help both novice and experienced gardeners tackle every possible building and planting project, from designing a landscape, improving soil and selecting trees, shrubs, lawns, flowers, vegetables and herbs to utilizing accents such as gazebos and building structures such as walls, fences, walkways, decks, patios, ponds and pools. Projects are rated for difficulty and sections on natural and chemical pest control, rejuvenating an existing landscape and templates to solve common landscaping problems make this book a must-have gardener’s reference.

Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville who describes herself as a journeyman gardener.

For gardeners who want to create their own piece of paradise, a good place to start is the massive American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. This exhaustively comprehensive reference book features 15,000 plants from new and exotic specimens to heirloom and garden favorites listed alphabetically by botanical name (a common-name index is also provided for new gardeners). Full-color pictures and concise profiles of each plant written by horticultural specialists are enormously helpful planning tools. Hardiness and heat-zone maps, an extensive glossary and index round out this invaluable reference guide to all things that grow.

Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville who describes herself as a journeyman gardener.

The Ides of March is no match for cooped-up gardeners eager to get their fingers into still-frosty earth. A new crop of gardening books should provide fertile soil for spring ideas and plantings.

Gardens are like poems, and two of horticulture’s best poets are George Little and Davis Lewis. These artist-gardeners have created a legendary Eden at their compound on Bainbridge Island, Washington, visited by thousands of pilgrims each year. The gorgeous photographs of their gardens in their first book, A Garden Gallery surprise, awe and thrill, like the best gardens should. Their quirky and beautiful concrete garden sculptures hide in lush and imaginative outdoor rooms that meld ancient Mediterranean, Mexican and tropical influences, and the pictures are accompanied by inventive text about gardening and living the Little and Lewis way. The pair describe their seasonal plans, present favorite plant lists and impart design advice including a wonderful section on water features. But it is their love affair with nature itself that is especially uplifting and lyrical: as they compare a leaf to an Egyptian boat; wax eloquently about their pomegranate sculpture recalling time spent in Greece; and identify the rhythms of light, sound, shape and color in nature, they “don’t shy away from the whimsical” but allow instinct and imagination to flower, creating a paradise profound.

Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville who describes herself as a journeyman gardener.