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Monty Don

What do our gardens say about us? 
 
Monty Don has spent many years travelling the world, from America to Japan, from Italy and the Adriatic to Spain and the Mediterranean, getting under the skin of a country through its gardens and gardening traditions. In British Gardens, he finally brings his focus to home, journeying from the northern tip of Scotland to the Cornish coast, seeking to understand what our gardens tell us about ourselves as a nation. 
 
Encompassing historical gardens and public parks, mountains and seascapes, urban gardens and rural nurseries, glasshouses and community plots, each encounter is another link in a larger story of British identity: marks of ingenuity, eccentricity, and adaptation to changing environments. From Northumbria’s Alnwick Gardens and Beatrix Potter’s Lake District farmhouse to the rewilded walled garden on the Knepp Estate and the story of Britain’s first garden gnome, Monty’s account brings in an astonishing range of British experience. 
 
Accompanied by a landmark five-part series on BBC2, and illustrated by stunning photography from Monty’s long-time collaborator Derry Moore, British Gardens is a definitive, and uniquely British, account of a nation like no other.

British Gardens

Andrea Wulf

One January morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London's Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram in the American colonies. But it was not bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds... 
 
Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever: Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary; the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany; the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on Captain Cook's Endeavour. 
 
This is the story of these men - friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants. Set against the backdrop of the emerging empire and the uncharted world beyond, The Brother Gardeners tells the story how Britain became a nation of gardeners.

The Brother Gardeners

Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession

John Lewis-Stempel

_________________ 
 
'BRITAIN'S FINEST LIVING NATURE WRITER' - THE TIMES 
 
WINNER OF THE THWAITES WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2015 
 
What really goes on in the long grass? 
 
Meadowland gives an unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life from January to December, together with its biography. In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren,the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others. Their births, lives, and deaths are stories that thread through the book from first page to last.

Meadowland

the private life of an English field

Tom Hart Dyke

Tom Hart Dyke has a bit of a thing about plants. You might call it an obsession. You might call him certifiable, in fact. But it's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ramshackle country estate and an obsession with plant collecting could want for only one thing - in Tom's case it's a walled garden containing examples of plants collected from every corner of the globe. 
 
Tom's infectious enthusiasm for anything with chlorophyll in it and the hugely ambitious World Garden project he has undertaken at his family home, Lullingstone Castle, in Kent have been documented in a 12-part television series for BBC 2. The first six parts (Save Lullingstone Castle) were shown in spring 2006, and the second six episodes (Return to Lullingstone Castle) in spring 2007. 
 
Tom's attempts to set up the World Garden aren't exactly straightforward. You might imagine, for example, that the easiest way to start preparing the ground inside the walled Elizabethan garden which he transforms into the main part of the world garden would be to enlist the help of a few people and a lot of hard digging. Well not for Tom, who enlists instead two large pigs, who do indeed do a great job of turning over the earth and fertilising it with great organic manure. But the problem is that they keep escaping into the Hart Dyke family burial plot next door where they start digging up Tom's ancestors... 
 
The World Garden is created to bring together a truly amazing collection of plants from every continent and so to show the global origins of the plants we all grow in our gardens. It's already establishing itself as a tourist attraction of some note as well as an educational resource. 
 
This is a book for all those who bought Tim Smit's Lost Gardens of Heligan. It's stuffed full of fascinating botanical information as well as the story of Tom's hapless struggle to overcome huge logistical nightmares. It's a riveting, hilarious story of English eccentricity in full bloom.

An Englishman's Home

The Adventures of an Eccentric Gardener

Arthur Parkinson

Most of us want a dog, or a cat, or a pony when we are young &ndash; but for Arthur Parkinson, it was always hens. Growing up in an ex-mining town in Nottinghamshire, the other kids in the playground called him 'Chicken Boy'. The quiet fulfilment of keeping hens became his sanctuary, a tonic for mental and physical health, a connection with his family and the natural world. Illustrated with Arthur's own characterful watercolours and photographs of his &lsquo;girls&rsquo;, Chicken Boy is a one-of-a-kind memoir of a life in nature.

Chicken Boy

My Life With Hens

Jason Hazeley

Joel Morris

These delightful books are the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. 
 
The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the books will greatly appeal to grown-ups. 
 
The eight books in the series feature original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. The other books in the series are: 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Sheds 
 
- The Ladybird Book of The Hipster 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Hangover 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Dating 
 
- How it Works: The Husband 
 
- How it Works: The Wife

This delightful book is the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. 
 
The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the book will greatly appeal to grown-ups. 
 
The eight books in the series feature original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. The other books in the series are: 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Dating 
 
- The Ladybird Book of The Hipster 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Hangover 
 
- How it Works: The Husband 
 
- How it Works: The Wife

The Ladybird Book of the Shed

Marc Hamer

Beloved author Marc Hamer writes about finding refuge in his tiny back garden in this highly original story of childhood, old age, and the restorative power of gardens. As a child, he kindled a deep love of the earth by watching plants and insects and exploring the world through a stack of old encyclopaedias he found in the shed. Now an old man, he creates a garden for himself in the neglected plot behind his house. 
 
A little book with a big heart: the insights glow as vivid as a flowerbed. If you want to be inspired, or you've lost your belief in the goodness of this world, this could be for you. 
 
'A sublime meditation on life, love, nature and family, woven with the wisdom gained through a life well lived' Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell 
 
'A book of great but tender power' Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast 
 
'Patterned with Hamer's gifts for observation, compression, and tone' New Yorker 
 
'Rich and tender' New York Times

Spring Rain

Clare Coulson

An exclusive tour of the private gardens of the UK&rsquo;s most influential garden designers. 
 
 From bucolic country cottages to expansive estates, this book showcases the private gardens of eighteen globally-renowned landscape architects. Featuring in-depth interviews, full garden tours and stunning photography by &Eacute;va N&eacute;meth, the book gives an insight into the inventive and idiosyncratic ways leading designers craft their own gardens,&#160;some of which are previously unpublished.&#160;Featured designers include Arabella Lennox-Boyd, Miranda Brooks, Sarah Price, Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart-Smith, Isabel and Julian Bannerman, Arne Maynard and Mary Keen. 
 
 Written and curated by gardening writer Clare Coulson, Wonderlands is a visual bible of the very best British gardens.

Wonderlands

British Garden Designers at Home

Russell Page

A fabulous book about designing gardens great and small, packed with wisdom on the abiding principles of gorgeous garden design. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALAN TITCHMARSH 
 
Russell Page was one of the most legendary gardeners and landscapers of the last century. He designed gardens great and small for clients around the world. A rare combination of born plantsman and garden architect, he was a master of colour, form and structure. Page also understood that most tricky dimension of garden design: the passage of time. From Longleat to the Frick Collection, his gardens can be enjoyed to this day. 
 
Packed with wisdom and beautiful writing, this book offers a unique perspective on great garden design and is essential reading for every gardener. 
 
'One of the most thoughtful and civilized gardening books ever written, by a master designer' Daily Telegraph

The Education of a Gardener

Alan Titchmarsh

You can't beat growing, picking and eating fruit from your very own garden. This book will guide you through the processes and pitfalls of fruit-growing, from propagating your first seeds, or planting your first fruit tree, to selecting the ripe fruits for your dinner table. 
 
Includes: 
* guidance on selecting all types of fruit for home growing 
* handy tips for maximizing flavour and cropping 
* illustrated A-Z profiles of recommended fruit 
* practical advice on care, harvesting, storage, pruning, propagation and pest control 
* step-by-step illustrations showing essential techniques 
 
Alan Titchmarsh imparts a lifetime of expertise in these definitive practical guides for beginners and experienced gardeners. Step-by-step illustrations and easy-to-follow instructions guide you through the basic gardening skills and on to the advanced techniques, providing everything you need to grow delicious fruit in your garden.

Alan Titchmarsh How to Garden: Growing Fruit

Len Howard

Enter the secret lives of Britain's ordinary garden birds and the brilliant, unconventional woman who opened her doors to them. 
 
In the late 1930s, Len Howard packed up her life in London, bought a plot of land in Sussex and built herself a little house there. This was to be Bird Cottage, a place where the doors of the house were open to the birds of the garden – great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, willow warblers and many others. Len lived the rest of her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. 
 
This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len. 
 
Enchanting, life-enriching, revelatory and completely original, this is a gorgeous evocation of a life lived in intimate contact with nature and a book about birds unlike any other. 
 
‘A unique, engaging and elegant insight into the lives of our precious and magical songbirds’ Arthur Parkinson 
 
‘A quiet revelation of attentiveness and sympathy. It impressed and moved me very much’ Steven Lovatt, author of Birdsong in a Time of Silence

Birds as Individuals

Mark Wallington

Mark Wallington has a dream. He is going to change the face of British comedy. 
 
Unfortunately for the residents of north London, he's going to finance this dream by becoming a gardener. 
 
The result is The Day Job, an account of a year spent working in other people's gardens: people like Mrs Fleming who is convinced there is buried treasure in the bottom bed; Mr Walters who is trying to create a fascist state policed by gnomes in his well-guarded plot in Gospel Oak; Mrs Glover who is probably the most attractive woman living in Britain; and poor Mr Nugent, who likes to save his urine in jam jars and pour it over his compost. 
 
Over four seasons Wallington crosses Hampstead Heath from job to job. He survives brushes with the evil contract gardeners who keep trying to knock him off his bicycle. He strives to impress literary agent Herman Gapp who might represent him - depending on what sort of job he does on Gapp's Alpine Terrace. He even finds time to fall for a housecleaner-cum-actor named Helen, as he becomes part of a strange band of artistes, each with a day job of their own, all waiting for that first break. 
 
This is the story of long nights spent in the back room of a pub trying to write unsolicited scripts, and of much longer days spent trying to understand the British and their strange obsession with gardening.

The Day Job

Adventures of a Jobbing Gardener

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.

Life in the Garden

Claire Ratinon

A powerful work of memoir and storytelling that will change the way we think about the natural world. 
 
Like many diasporic people of colour, Claire Ratinon grew up feeling cut off from the natural world. She lived in cities, reluctant to be outdoors and stuck with the belief that success and status could fill the space where belonging was absent. 
 
But a chance encounter with a rooftop farm was the start of a journey that caused her to rethink the life she'd been creating and her beliefs about who she ought to be. Enlivened, she turned her hand to growing food in London before finding herself yearning for a small parcel of land to call her own. 
 
Unearthed tells the story of her leaving the city for the English countryside - and her first garden - in the hope of forging a pathway towards the embrace of the natural world and a sense of belonging cultivated on her own terms. 
 
'Ratinon's story will change hearts and minds' Alice Vincent 
 
'A beautiful book about nature...I recommend it' Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)

Unearthed

On race and roots, and how the soil taught me I belong

Stephen Anderton

Christopher Lloyd (Christo) was one of the greatest English gardeners of the twentieth century, perhaps the finest plantsman of them all. His creation is the garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex, and it is a tribute to his vision and achievement that, after his death in 2006, the Heritage Lottery Fund made a grant of £4 million to help preserve it for the nation. This enjoyable and revealing book - the first biography of Christo - is also the story of Dixter from 1910 to 2006, a unique unbroken history of one English house and one English garden spanning a century. 
 
It was Christo's father, Nathaniel, who bought the medieval manor at Dixter and called in the fashionable Edwardian architect, Lutyens, to rebuild the house and lay out the garden. And it was his mother, Daisy, who made the first wild garden in the meadows there. Christo was born at Dixter in 1921. Apart from boarding school, war service and a period at horticultural college, he spent his whole life there, constantly re-planting and enriching the garden, while turning out landmark books and exhaustive journalism. Opinionated, argumentative and gloriously eccentric, he changed the face of English gardening through his passions for meadow gardening, dazzling colours and thorough husbandry. 
 
As the baby of a family of six - five boys and a girl - Christo was stifled by his adoring mother. Music-loving and sports-hating, he knew the Latin names of plants before he was eight. This fascinating book reveals what made Christo tick by examining his relationships with his generous but scheming mother, his like-minded friends (such as gardeners Anna Pavord and Beth Chatto) and his colleagues (including his head gardener, Fergus Garrett, a plantsman in Christo's own mould).

Christopher Lloyd

His Life at Great Dixter

Ursula Buchan

SHORTLISTED FOR INSPIRATIONAL BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE 2014 GARDEN MEDIA GUILD AWARDS. 
 
The wonderfully evocative story of how Britain’s World War Two gardeners – with great ingenuity, invincible good humour and extraordinary fortitude – dug for victory on home turf. 
 
A Green and Pleasant Land tells the intriguing and inspiring story of how Britain's wartime government encouraged and cajoled its citizens to grow their own fruit and vegetables. As the Second World War began in earnest and a whole nation listened to wireless broadcasts, dug holes for Anderson shelters, counted their coupons and made do and mended, so too were they instructed to ‘Dig for Victory’. 
 
Ordinary people, as well as gardening experts, rose to the challenge: gardens, scrubland, allotments and even public parks were soon helping to feed a nation deprived of fresh produce. As Ursula Buchan reveals, this practical contribution to the Home Front was tackled with thrifty ingenuity, grumbling humour and extraordinary fortitude. The simple act of turning over soil and tending new plants became important psychologically for a population under constant threat of bombing and even invasion. Gardening reminded people that their country and its more innocent and insular pursuits were worth fighting for. Gardening in wartime Britain was a part of the fight for freedom.

A Green and Pleasant Land

How England’s Gardeners Fought the Second World War

Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

Contents include poems on Paradises, Gardens of Love, Gardens in the Mind, Gardens and Seasons, Flowers, Gardeners, The Work of the Garden, Gardens of the Wild, City Gardens, Public Gardens, Ruined Gardens, and A Garden of Gardens. Contributors include John Milton, Ovid, E.E. Cummings, Thom Gunn, John Donne, James Merrill, Wallace Stevens, Robert Browning, Shakespeare, and many others.

Garden Poems

Ruth Scurr

'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times 
 
A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade. 
 
Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months. 
 
In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade. 
 
'Immensely satisfying and captivating... Charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, TLS 
 
'Grippingly original' The Times 
 
'A delight to read' Daily Telegraph 
 
* A Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and History Today * 
 
Winner of a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2022

Napoleon

A Life in Gardens and Shadows

Terry Walton

'Every time he appears on the programme we feel that life is worth living. He has that power to lift your spirits.' - Jeremy Vine 
 
Terry Walton has kept an allotment in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales for over fifty years. He started when he was four, helping on his father's plot on the side of the mountain, cutting bracken and collecting sheep manure to feed the vegetables. 
 
He was farming his own plot at eleven and he went on to build an allotment empire, selling his vegetables and flowers to local customers. The proceeds paid for his first car, a canary yellow Ford Popular, when he was just seventeen. Then, in 2006, after half a decade of happy gardening, Terry's allotment was adopted by the Jeremy Vine Show and he became an unlikely media star. 
 
In this absorbing and entertaining memoir, Terry documents how the valley has changed over the years, his own conversion to organic gardening, and the colourful characters he meets; interspersing his anecdotes with topical tips, family recipes and quirky line drawings. 
 
My Life on a Hillside Allotment is the perfect read for gardeners, allotmenteers and anyone who loves the great outdoors.

My Life on a Hillside Allotment

Carol Klein

This charming insight into what each season and month of the year brings for a cottage garden will capture the imagination and inspire any gardener (expert or novice) to get out and about, grab a spade and get your hands dirty! Written by the BBC's Carol Klein, full of practical advice and tips, and full of stunning photography, this is a book truly to savour... 
 
'Her energy, knowledge and enthusiasm are an inspiration in every month of the year, and this very special book will be a real gem for all garden lovers.' -- Radio Times 
'Beautifully designed, this one is too good to miss!' -- Home & Country 
'Vibrant, informative, inspirational and personal... Klein's heartfelt love poem to her beautiful garden.' -- Gardens Magazine 
'A delight to read' -- ***** Reader review 
'A wonderful garden book from a wonderful gardener' -- ***** Reader review 
'What can I say? I bought it when it first came out in 2011 and it STILL hasn't made it on to a bookshelf as I am constantly dipping into it' -- ***** Reader review 
'A must have for gardeners old and new' -- ***** Reader review 
'A wonderful book which I found hard to put down' -- ***** Reader review 
'So inspiring!' -- ***** Reader review 
 
*********************************************************************************************** 
In this wonderful gardening journal, the BBC's Carol Klein, with characteristic warmth, eloquence and infectious enthusiasm, tells us the story of a year in her beautiful garden at Glebe Cottage. 
 
With superb photography throughout, she takes us on a procession through the seasons, as she plans and plants, sows seeds and nurtures cuttings, tends the borders, and harvests her crops. 
 
Her energy, knowledge and passion will be an inspiration to gardeners old and new alike in every month of the year.

Life in a Cottage Garden

a delightful, personal account of a year spent delighting in and cherishing a beautiful garden from the BBC’s Carol Klein

Jonathan Ashworth

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2021* 
 
 'A wholly original, semi-autobiographical book on how to live, how to be calm and content with only a little, in a quietly humming garden' Daily Mail 
 
Beautifully illustrated, Seed to Dust is a reflective and restorative account of a life lived in harmony with nature. 
 
Marc Hamer has nurtured the same twelve acres of garden for decades. It's rarely visited so he is the only person who fully knows its secrets. But it's not his garden, and his relationship with its owner is at once distant and curiously intimate. 
 
 In Seed to Dust, Marc takes us month-by-month through his experiences both working in the garden and outside it. We encounter new plants and wildlife, gardening folklore and the joys of manual work; we learn, too, about Marc's path from homelessness to family contentment, and the cycles of change that run through both the garden's life and our own. 
 
'An absorbing combination of memoir, gardening folklore and natural history' Country Life 
 
'Life-affirming... Absorbing' Sue Stuart-Smith, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Well-Gardened Mind

Seed to Dust

A mindful, seasonal tale of a year in the garden

Lucy Hutchings

"Clear, modern and inspiring" - Alan Titchmarsh, gardener and broadcasterIn this truly innovative book Lucy Hutchings &ndash; aka She Grows Veg &ndash; proves that vegetable gardening doesn&#39;t always require outdoor space.Through clever uses of space and containers, understanding of growing conditions and a unique, design-led approach, Lucy showcases how anyone can grow pretty much anything in their back garden, courtyard, balcony or kitchen.Lucy creates&#160;19&#160;projects, from living vegetable walls and hydroponics basics, to&#160;indoor greenhouses&#160;and&#160;hanging herb racks&#160;that have all the decorative style and visual interest of ornamental house plants.With step-by-step illustrations and stunning photography, with Get Up and Grow, you can go from gardening novice to growing pro in a matter of weeks.&#160;Lucy is blazing a trail for new-wave gardening with a mantra of anything is possible, for anyone.

Get Up and Grow

Herb, Vegetable and Fruit Growing Projects for Both Indoors and Outdoors, from She Grows Veg

Mark Diacono

Guild of Food Writer’s Awards, Highly Commended in ‘Specialist Subject Cookbook’ category (2022)André Simon Awards shortlisted (2022)"A beautiful book, and one which makes me want to cultivate my garden just as much as scurry to the kitchen." &mdash; Nigella Lawson"At its core this book is about cooking, but it&#39;s an essential and valuable resource for folk who love to grow their own herbs and cook. Sorted by individual herbs with detailed notes on how to grow and use them, it&#39;s going to be a book I will turn to a lot over the years." &mdash; Nik SharmaHerb is a plot-to-plate exploration of herbs that majors on the kitchen, with just enough of the simple art of growing to allow the reader to welcome a wealth of home-grown flavours into their kitchen. Author Mark Diacono is a gardener as well as a cook. Packed with ideas for enjoying and using herbs, Herb is much more than your average recipe book. Mark&#160;shares the techniques at the heart of sourcing, preparing and using herbs well, enabling you to make delicious food that is as rewarding in the process as it is in the end result. The book explores how to use herbs, when to deploy them, and how to capture those flavours to use when they might not be seasonally available. The reader will become familiar with the differences in flavour intensity, provenance, nutritional benefits and more. Focusing on the familiars including thyme, rosemary, basil, chives and bay, Herb also opens the door to a few lesser-known flavours. The recipes build on bringing your herbs alive &ndash; whether that&rsquo;s a quickly swizzed parsley pesto when short of time on a weekday evening, or in wrapping a crumbly Lancashire cheese in lovage for a few weeks to infuse it with bitter earthiness. With a guide to sowing, planting, feeding and propagating herbs, there are also full plant descriptions and their main culinary affinities. Mark then looks at various ways to preserve herbs including making oils, drying, vinegars, syrups and freezing, before offering over 100 innovative recipes that make the most of your new herb knowledge.

Herb

A Cook's Companion

Christopher Stocks

In Forgotten Fruits, Christopher Stocks tells the fascinating - often rather bizarre - stories behind Britain's rich heritage of fruit and vegetables. Take Newton Wonder apples, for instance, first discovered around 1870 allegedly growing in the thatch of a Derbyshire pub. Or the humble gooseberry which, among other things, helped Charles Darwin to arrive at his theory of evolution. Not to mention the ubiquitous tomato, introduced to Britain from South America in the sixteenth century but regarded as highly poisonous for hearly 200 years. 
 
This is a wonderful piece of social and natural history that will appeal to every gardener and food aficionado.

Forgotten Fruits

The stories behind Britain's traditional fruit and vegetables

Jenny Uglow

Did the Romans have rakes? Did the monks get muddy? Did the potato seem really, really weird when it arrived on our shores? 
 
This lively 'potted' history of gardening in Britain takes us on a garden tour from the thorn hedges around prehistoric settlements to the rage for ornamental grasses and 'outdoor rooms' today. It tracks down the ordinary folk who worked the earth - the apprentice boys and weeding women, the florists and nursery gardeners - as well as aristocrats and grand designers and famous plant-hunters. 
 
Coloured by Jenny Uglow's own love for plants, and brought to life in the many vivid illustrations, it deals not only with flowery meads, grottoes and vistas, landscapes and ha-has, parks and allotments, but tells you, for example, how the Tudors made their curious knots; how housewives used herbs to stop freckles; how the suburbs dug for victory in World War II. 
 
With a brief guide to particular historic or evocative gardens open to the public, this is a book to put in your pocket when planning a summer day out - but also to read in your deckchair with a glass of cold wine, when dead-heading is simply too much.

A Little History of British Gardening

Carol Klein is one of Britain's best loved horticulturists, and for decades gardening has been at the heart of her extraordinary life. From her childhood adventures in Manchester to her first experiments in plantswomanship at Glebe Cottage, and from training as an artist and a teacher, and then finding an entirely unexpected career as one of Britain’s most beloved television presenters, in this long-awaited memoir Carol tells the story of the people, places and plants that have shaped her life. 
 
Exploring why our relationship with the natural worldis so important, and how it brings joy, creativity and good health to our lives, Carol also offers irresistible insights on her favourite flowers and plants, and how to help them flourish. A story of a life lived happily amongst the greenery, this book is the perfect companion for anyone who has sought solace in the natural world.

Hortobiography

Dave Goulson

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
'Exquisite...should be read by every gardener in the country' Observer 
 
The Garden Jungle is a wonderful introduction to the hundreds of small creatures with whom we live cheek-by-jowl and of the myriad ways that we can encourage them to thrive. 
 
The Garden Jungle is about the wildlife that lives right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in the pavement, and in the soil beneath our feet. Dave Goulson gives us an insight into the fascinating and sometimes weird lives of these creatures, taking us burrowing into the compost heap, digging under the lawn and diving into the garden pond. He explains how our lives and ultimately the fate of humankind are inextricably intertwined with that of earwigs, bees, lacewings and hoverflies, unappreciated heroes of the natural world. 
 
For anyone who has a garden, or cares about our planet, this book is essential reading.

The Garden Jungle

or Gardening to Save the Planet

Joan Morgan

Winner of the Garden Media Guild Awards Reference Book of the Year 2016, the Guild of Food Writers Food Book of the year 2016, and the BBC Food &amp; Farming Awards 2016 for Outstanding Achievement. 
Accompanied by a beautiful and comprehensive website of the same name, this wonderfully unique book is an indispensable and one-of-a-kind guide. It tells the story of the pear from its delightful taste and wonderful appearance to breeding and cultivation, following the fruit’s journey through history and around the world. 
 
Beautifully illustrated with 40 botanical watercolour paintings by Elisabeth Dowle, The Book of Pears is the most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to the pear. Moving through continents and cultures, Joan Morgan celebrates the pear’s long history as both a fresh and cooking fruit. Revealing the secrets of the pear as a status symbol, some of the most celebrated fruit growers in history, and how the pear came to be so important as an international commodity. 
 
The pear directory, which makes up the second half of the book, covers the world’s ancient and modern varieties, each with full tasting notes and historical, geographical and horticultural detail. A fully illustrated version of this directory is shown on the author's website www.thebookofpears.fruitforum.net

The Book of Pears

The Definitive History and Guide to over 500 varieties

Liz Dobbs

Have you ever thought how useful it would be to have a pocket-sized book of gardening advice to take outside with you into the garden? Ever looked at a plant infected with white fly and wondered what to do? Well then this is the book for you.Keep Calm and Pot On is crammed full of practical advice in the form of tips and techniques as well as being filled with humorous quotes to keep you amused whilst waiting for that inevitable rain cloud to clear. The useful tips and invaluable techniques will provide an immediate answer to many of your gardening queries, without you having to search a large tome once you step back indoors.Learn how to deadhead a rose to ensure a successful season of bloom the following year, or the ideal place to plant a sunshine-loving flower. Assure that your hard work pays off by using the essential techniques in the book to promote continued growth and guarantee that your plot, however small, always looks at its best.This helpful little book is also filled with witty quotations that are taken from both contemporary and historical sources, including films, essays, novels and various accomplished gardeners. Those quoted include Anna Pavord, Alice B. Toklas, Monty Don, Harold Epstein, Margaret Atwood and many more. Featuring funny and inspiring anecdotes, wry truths, useful advice and timeless wisdom, this neat book confirms itself as the perfect aide for any gardener.

Keep Calm and Pot On

Good Advice for Gardeners

Alex Dingwall-Main

'The rollicking adventures of an English garden designer in Provence'  Independent 'Escapist reading-magic' The TimesAlex Dingwall-Main left London with his wife and dog nine years ago for the Luberon region of the South of France. A landscape gardener of international renown he was in search of a challenge - a new climate, a new way of gardening and a new way of life.       This is his account of gardening his way round Provence, and in particular, of attempting to restore the secret garden of M-nerbes. Situated high on the plains of the Luberon region, M-nerbes is a famously beautiful village - but this garden had long been forgotten. It trailed down over seven levels, thick with brambles and hornets' nests, almond blossom and ancient fig trees. It was an archetypal Proven-al garden and for one whole year it dominated Alex Dingwall-Main's life. From distant dreams came growth and disasters, but ultimately, the garden is reclaimed. From truffle dealers to local mayors, film star neighbours to JCB drivers and olive-tree farmers, Alex takes us on a guided tour of an extraordinary area.     Published in hardback with serialisation in The Times and major review and feature coverage, this is the enticing paperback edition of a beautifully written book on plants, people and life. Evocative and inspiring, The Luberon Garden will take you on an unforgettable journey.

The Luberon Garden

A provencal story of Apricot Blossom, Truffles and Thyme

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