My good friend, Helen Yoest, can teach even you how to garden. Photo by Ken Gergle.

There’s a pernicious rumor going around that gardening is just too hard for the average person. Oh sure, they can paint their floors and bake a gold-leaf cake for the Queen, but plant some herbs? That’s just so hard! Garden coach Helen Yoest thinks this rumor is pure manure. So she’s written a book to prove that anyone can garden successfully. Yes, even you.

Reading Helen’s words in Gardening With Confidence is like working with the best teacher you ever had in high school. She speaks clearly. She explains carefully. She meets you at your level of expertise. She instructs from personal experience gained day-after-day in the garden pulling weeds, placing stones, and planting flowers. Her mission is to help you to your first little success, and from the confidence gained from that move on to bigger and better things. Helen isn’t interested in impressing readers with how much she knows. Rather, she’s concerned with readers impressing themselves with how much they can accomplish once they believe they can.

Grumpy met Helen some years back when she offered to tour him around her home town of Raleigh, North Carolina to see some nice gardens. Naturally, he also wanted to see her own garden, “Helen’s Haven,” that rests in a comfy but spacious back yard smack-dab in the midst of middle-class America. He was impressed. Here’s a peek.

Spanish lavender, irises, hostas, Russian sage, and penstemons find a home in “Helen’s Haven.” Photo by Helen Yoest.

Clearly, Helen knows not only how to grow lots of plants, but how to combine them to show them off at their best. And this is what Gardening With Confidence will teach you — no matter if you like native plants, herbs, flowers for birds and butterflies, container gardening, gardening without chemicals, or just showing up the next-door neighbors. Take a look at this display.

Potted herbs and white amaryllis adorn this elegant bench. Photo by Arielle Langhorne.

Pretty cool, huh? Think you could do that? Grumpy thinks you could. So does Helen.

Grumpy believes Gardening With Confidence is the perfect Christmas gift for someone who likes plants, but has heard the whispers that “gardening is just so hard.” Repeat after me: It’s Not. Gardening is easy and fun once you get started. You just have to get started.

You’ll find Gardening With Confidence at amazon.com for just $24.95. It’s available at the same price at Helen’s website. Look for it in bookstores too. For every copy sold, Grumpy earns zilch. Oh well. Once again, I do this just for you, my readers.