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This beautifully produced package comprises a 128-page book, profusely illustrated with line drawings and colour plates, together with a computer program. The retail price of the book is £3.95. Thus the program should add £11 worth of convenience.

Sadly, this is not the case. The liner notes suggest a menu-driven program which allows the facility to plan your garden, dump the result to a printer, do another one and compare the results. It also states that the computer will advise you which plants to put where.

The first program is fairly crude Basic with user-defined characters to represent grass, building, water and plants. A moving cursor allows placement in any area of the screen. When it's complete, no print option is available, neither is any advice. You'd be better off with a paper and pencil. Similarly, the gardening your program takes so long to load, and contains such little information, that a good reference book would be vastly superior.

The liner notes are an inaccurate description of a program which adds nothing to a good book.

D.M.