There are gardening books for instruction, and gardening books to read for pleasure. The best of the latter is the late Christopher Lloyd’s classic The Well-Tempered Garden (1970). Like all his books, this drew on his long experience in the garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex. He wrote well and his style, like his garden preferences, is personal and nicely opinionated.
At the other end of the scale is another oldie, The Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening (1978), my bible when I first had a garden. I later discarded it – only to buy it again second-hand, unable to live without its stout hessian binding, its succinct descriptions and general understated excellence.
Nor can I do without the Royal Horticultural Society’s Illustrated Plants For Places (2001), a fat, squat little handbook telling you what is most likely to thrive in different soils and varieties of sites. This saves you from much heartbreak and failure. Read More
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