Plant a library in your garden, then step back and watch what happens. Little Free Libraries give you a chance to cultivate relationships and your garden at the same time.

Little Free Libraries are small, freestanding libraries, on the scale of an extra-large mailbox. They're mounted on a sturdy post in the front yard, usually close to the sidewalk, and stocked (by you) with a limited, but choice, selection of books. Neighbors, dog-walkers and passers-by can take a book from the library or leave a book of their own. Each book is one of a kind, and the inventory is constantly turning over.

These little libraries can be designed and painted to look like schoolhouses, barns, fire stations or cozy bungalows. By their very nature, they are garden art. Like a child's playhouse, a potting shed or even a big urn on a pedestal, they add an architectural element to the garden, which in turn opens up opportunities for interesting landscaping around them. But there is more to these structures than garden decor. They reveal something more than flowers do about your interests and your aesthetic sense, and they're likely to start a few neighborly conversations.

When you install a Little Free Library in your garden, you're joining an informal worldwide network of like-minded people. The Little Free Library movement, which started in Wisconsin in 2009, has grown into a far-flung community of 50,000 Little Free Libraries, which are found in all 50 states and more than 70 countries. By the end of 2017, the organization hopes to double the number of little libraries, to 100,000.

Gardens and reading go pretty naturally hand in hand. Good gardening always requires a fair amount of homework, for one thing, and escaping to the garden with a good book is a time-honored way to take a break from the busy, buzzing world. Reading in a garden, in the company of birds and flowers, really does make the workaday world seem far away. Some Little Free Libraries incorporate a bench into their designs, so people curious about the books can sit down and have a look before they make a selection.

Having a Little Free Library in the front yard also changes the dynamics of your garden and your neighborhood. Passers-by and neighbors may have always taken an interest in your landscaping, but when they stop to peruse the selection of books in the library, they have an excuse to look around at the garden more closely than they otherwise might. If you happen to be outside when someone stops to check out the books, you might find yourself answering questions about your favorite hostas or the best way to prune hydrangeas -- and a neighborly conversation is off to a good start.

Place a few steppingstones around the base of your library, and make room for a few tough and hardy plants. Sedums, daylilies, mums, daisies and small evergreen shrubs will enliven the space and the library, and will also shrug off a certain amount of wear and tear. Avoid plants with thorns: This is not the place for shrub roses or prickly cactus.

Enhance your visitors' experience of your Little Free Library with some fragrant plants. This would be a good spot for a pot of mint or some rosemary, basil or thyme.

Climbing plants, such as an annual black-eyed Susan vine or a perennial clematis, will clamber happily up the post and make your little library look like an old-fashioned cottage in a garden. To help bring the garden up to eye level, you could even put a green roof on your library; try succulents, mosses, small ornamental grasses (such as blue fescue) or even a strip of turf from a garden shop. You can easily cut the grass on the roof with a pair of kitchen scissors.

James Baggett, the editor of Country Gardens magazine, maintains a Little Free Library in Des Moines, Iowa. He shares the task with a neighbor, a little girl who has been his assistant librarian since she was 9 years old. Together, they stock their little library with books for young adults and for grown-ups, too. "I like to think ours is one of the better-curated Little Free Libraries," Baggett says.

There are no rules for stocking your library. Gardening books are fine -- as are field guides, cookbooks and picture books for kids. After a short time, you'll begin to get a feel for the books that are popular with borrowers and contributors in your neighborhood.

The seasons will come and go, and your library visitors will get to know your garden pretty well: When they tuck a book under their arm, you can bet they're also borrowing a few gardening ideas to take home to their own yard. Maybe they'll even plant a library of their own, and the word will keep spreading.

SOURCES

-- Most communities welcome Little Free Libraries, but before you put up a little library in your garden, check local zoning laws. The Little Free Library website (littlefreelibrary.org) includes how-to information and FAQs that may help. The website also has links to plans, kits and prebuilt libraries.

-- Several Etsy shops specialize in ready-made Little Free Libraries. (etsy.com)

-- There is even a book about Little Free Libraries; "The Little Free Library Book," by Margret Aldrich (Coffee House Press, $20).

-- For more ideas, check Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr.

A well-designed vegetable garden is a wonderful source of fresh produce for the chef, but it can also be a favorite garden destination, a place to retreat to and relax. If you plan it right, a kitchen garden can be the prettiest planting on your property.

Start by choosing a site that meets the requirements of the plants. Vegetables of all kinds flourish in sun, so find a spot that gets a good eight hours of direct sunlight. Your site should be level, on a part of your property that you walk past every day, and convenient to the kitchen. It's important to have a nearby source of water so you don't have to drag a hose or carry watering cans too far. These are the basics. After that, let your imagination go.

"Design is often what is missing from the vegetable garden, yet it is the most important element to enjoying the garden," says Ellen Ecker Ogden, who recommends including a bench, table, pergola or arbor in the design to make it more inviting. "It's a nice way to say, 'I like it here. I don't just come here to work and pull weeds,'" she says.

Ogden, the author of "The Complete Kitchen Garden," went to art school, but "then I turned into a gardener," she says. She balanced her interests by becoming a kitchen-garden designer. Her four-square garden in Vermont is as pretty as it is productive, with lettuce and greens growing in sweeping curves, lozenges and circles instead of traditional rows. "It's really a visual thing for me as much as it is a food thing," she says.

Most people start with a space that's too big. "They have an appetite to grow everything," Ogden says. Instead, pick and choose your crops just as you would at a market. The selection of fresh produce at local markets expands every year, so maybe you don't need to grow your own eggplant or zucchini. Instead, you might want to concentrate on salad greens, Ogden says, especially if you're a new gardener. "They grow fast, there are not many pests and they have really high nutrition per square foot," she says.

Instead of growing six tomato plants, you might decide to make room for just one or two, perhaps a cherry tomato and one other. That leaves room for herbs, such as basil and oregano, to help those tomatoes taste even better.

Color should also play a role in your choices, just as it does in flower beds. Plant a mixture of red and green lettuces, or train golden wax beans up a tepee. Flowers grown right alongside your vegetables not only fill the garden with bright colors, but also attract pollinators and beneficial insects that help manage pests in your vegetable beds. Ogden loves to plant nasturtiums in her kitchen garden. She likes calendulas and marigolds, especially the little signet marigolds called "Lemon Gem." She also relies on the flowers of some vegetable crops to add a flourish. Scarlet runner beans have bright red blooms that attract hummingbirds. Okra flowers look like sunny yellow hibiscus.

Texture is a big element in interesting gardens, too. Frilly lettuces look like a luxurious ruffled petticoat around the edge of a vegetable garden. Shiny red and green peppers sparkle among the foliage. The feathery tops of carrots and the spiky foliage of onions and leeks give the eye a lot of contrast to enjoy. Herbs of all kinds add still more texture, as well as fragrance.

To give a vegetable garden even more character, build upward. In Ogden's garden, an arbor lifts pole beans up into the light. Peas, cucumbers and even melons can be grown on a sturdy trellis. Just remember, tall elements should be placed toward the back of the garden (which should be on the north side) so they do not shade out crops in front.

Sprawling plants may need a place of their own. Especially if you have a small garden, pots are a great way to grow more crops without giving up much space in the ground. Ogden plants pumpkins in half a whiskey barrel near her driveway instead of giving them space in her kitchen garden. Last year, she also grew tomatoes, summer squash and potatoes in pots.

Vegetable gardening doesn't have to be hard or expensive, Ogden says. Start small, with beds no more than 4 feet wide. Sketch out a pretty planting plan on paper, and leave plenty of room for generous paths. Make liberal use of steppingstones so you don't compact your soil while working in your beds. Sow seeds or plant transplants of a good variety of crops you can harvest over a long season. Then, look forward to spending some time in your garden every day, inspecting its progress, thinning and weeding if necessary, and harvesting a few leaves of lettuce or fresh tomatoes for your dinner salad. And don't forget that garden bench. "Food is important and functional, but it's important to me to have the garden look nice, too," Ogden says. In a well-designed kitchen garden, you can count on a bumper crop of satisfaction.

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Getting It Right

A great design is just about all that separates a vegetable garden that's a chore from one that is a pleasure, says Ellen Ecker Ogden. Here are a few of her tips:

-- Don't overwhelm yourself. Start small. A 4-by-4-foot or 4-by-8-foot bed may be just right.

-- Look for ideas everywhere, then come up with a design that works in your space.

-- Don't plant in rows: Embellish the layout by making a big "X" with lettuce plants, or plant a checkerboard pattern of greens and flowers. Try planting radishes in a diamond shape. "It's a lot more fun," Ogden says.

-- Make wide paths. The main path through your garden should be 4 feet wide, Ogden says. Secondary paths can be narrower, but they need not be.

-- Make room for garden furniture or art. "Put some personality" out there, Ogden says. "I love art in the garden."

-- Choose plants wisely. Ogden advocates what she calls her "80-20 rule." Plant 80 percent of the garden with things you can't do without, and 20 percent with crops you haven't tried before. This may be your summer to try artichokes, for example, or cinnamon basil. "You should always be learning," she says.

-- Place the garden close to the house. "People say they have a problem with deer, or with groundhogs," she says. "It's usually because the garden is too far away."

-- Go up: A trellis for crops or flowers will make the garden more interesting, and it will use the available space and light more efficiently.

-- Ogden considers color, texture and height when she makes her designs. "One of my favorite combinations is artichokes with Empress of India nasturtiums and purple basil," she says.

-- Spend time in your garden every day, but don't call it work. "Tell yourself, 'I'm going to go out and play in the garden,'" Ogden says. "It will give you some light-heartedness."

SOURCES

Books, magazines and garden websites are full of inspiration to help you design a pretty, successful vegetable garden. Ellen Ecker Ogden's book, "The Complete Kitchen Garden," includes recipes for kitchen gardens with different themes. You don't have to choose just one -- flip through, pick out elements you like and combine them in your own design, she suggests. Check her website, ellenogden.com.

-- Gardener's Supply Co. (gardeners.com) has a free online planning tool to help customers design their own vegetable gardens. The tool is especially helpful for raised-bed gardens and square-foot gardening, which concentrate on making efficient use of space. The company also has several preplanned designs and sells the seeds to help you turn the plan into reality.

-- Mother Earth News (motherearthnews.com) has a vegetable-garden planning app to help readers design, plant and maintain a vegetable garden. You can experiment with designs, generate a planting guide and make notes to remind yourself to rotate crops from year to year.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

Designing your own garden is half the fun, whether you do it all at once or a bit at a time. But you don't have to do it alone: help, advice and good ideas are as close as your smartphone, where you can find garden design apps and other online gardening tools.

Garden designers often use sophisticated software to design and present their ideas. The computer-assisted design programs they rely on are made for professionals, and they're tricky to master -- and frustrating, especially if you're just going to be a one-time user. Apps and online tools, on the other hand, have been developed to help you work comfortably with the fundamentals of design so you can transform your property into a garden you can be proud of.

"You're not ready to pick up a shovel until you have a plan," says Jennifer Silver, communications manager for Julie Moir Messervy Design Studio in Vermont. Four years ago, Messervy's six-person garden-design firm introduced a design app called Palette, now renamed Home Outside (which is the also the title of one of Messervy's most popular books). The app, which is free, puts professional design tools in your hands, but you don't have to be a pro to use them.

Home Outside enables you to make an overall garden plan for your property. Even if you're only thinking of installing a patio in the backyard, drawing up a master plan is a good idea, Silver says. It helps establish flow, so the whole garden -- from the curb to the back fence -- will be more graceful, coherent and accommodating. A full-garden plan also helps you avoid expensive mistakes, she says, because it forces you to look at each part of your yard and think about the way the spaces work and feel and relate to one another.

With Home Outside, users can simply import a Google Earth image of their property, which neatly solves the challenge of measuring and mapping existing features. This image is the essential first layer of the landscape design. From there, the app guides you through the process of adding more layers or overlays -- paths, walls, flower beds, water features and plants. You can even add labels and notes, make a list of materials or sources, or jot down the names of specific plants you're interested in. If you decide you need professional advice (for a fee, of course), you can use the app to contact and collaborate with garden designers in Messervy's office.

Free is hard to beat. Another design app, Garden Planner, which costs $34 (though a free 15-day trial is available), lets you sketch the layout of your property and drag icons representing walls, paths, trees, shrubs and flowers around the space and reshape them. Putting a plan together like this feels like playing, which encourages experimentation.

HGTV also offers landscape design software ($80) that includes a Deck Wizard feature to help gardeners design decks and patios. You start with a plan view or by importing digital images of your property, then use a simple drag-and-drop process to add paths, fences, flower beds and other features. The software allows your design to be viewed both as a plan and as if you were standing looking at the garden (in elevation). It shows how the landscape changes through the seasons and even projects how trees and shrubs will grow from garden-shop size to maturity. A built-in plant encyclopedia will help you choose the best plants for your climate. For first-time designers, the options may appear almost overwhelming.

Garden design is a complex process, and it really starts with taking stock of your property, making lists of priorities and possibilities, and trying to imagine a garden where there is nothing at present. Designer-based apps and software help you do all these things and keep you from going down a lot of dead ends.

It will be helpful to listen to the thoughts and comments of experienced designers, which you can do from any spot with a Wi-Fi connection. YouTube, the champion of do-it-yourself projects, is a great source of short garden design videos. Houzz, an online design resource, presents hundreds of thousands of garden images -- a deep well of ideas -- with links to designer websites where you can find videos, workbooks, galleries of projects and, in general, lots of inspiration.

Looking at pictures, watching videos and moving garden features around on a template on the screen of your phone, computer or tablet may not seem like hands-in-the-dirt gardening, but the point of a design is that you're interested in the overall effect, not just the beauty of individual flowers scattered around your yard. It's hard to design a good garden until you explore the territory. Dig in online first, and you'll be sowing the seeds for a successful garden plan.

SOURCES / SCREEN TIME

-- Home Outside is the garden design app developed by Julie Moir Messervy Design Studio (jmmds.com). The app and all its tools are free. In addition to garden design, the app also has an "events" palette to help users plan garden weddings and outdoor parties. You'll need some practice to take advantage of all the features of this professional app.

-- With the Garden Planner app ($34), you can create a template for your property and add trees, shrubs, flower beds, paths and patios, among many other features. The app's intuitive design is easy to use.

-- HGTV Ultimate Home Design with Landscaping and Decks software ($80; homedesignsoftware.tv) lets you upload an image of your home, then design landscaping around it. An encyclopedia with more than 7,500 plants is included.

-- Check houzz.com and YouTube for garden ideas and resources.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)