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Lucy Bellamy's thoughtful book condenses the fashionable and sustainable New Perennials design movement into flexible gardening plans. All of the plants in Brilliant & Wild are perennials, meaning that they will return year after year to flower and grow again. Bellamy doesn’t speak down to her reader, but nor does she overwhelm them, explaining essential basics such as understanding Latin plant names and key groups of plants. This book will give you the means to devise a planting scheme that suits your taste and needs, which will also sustain the birds and insects in your local area, too.
While there are plenty of practical nuggets in English Country Garden Doyenne Margery Fish's book, it's probably better enjoyed as a witty and insightful diary of how Fish and her cantankerous husband Walter transformed a Somerset farmyard into a stunning garden. Written through the seasons over several years after the Second World War, We Made a Garden is an elegant and charming view into another form of horticulture. Even if you only have a windowbox, Fish's passion for plants makes this an irresistible read.
This was the book that most transformed me as a balcony gardener, from someone who faffed about a bit with little pots and grand plans better suited to a garden to a person who really understood the benefits and challenges of a flowerbed in the sky. Palmer blends creative ideas with practical information about container gardening through the seasons, and really grasps the basics of balcony gardening from which any enthusiastic amateur can blossom.
The resurgence in interest in house plants has seen endless books published on the subject, many of which cover the same ground in a variety of trend-aware designs. Root, Nurture, Grow, however, progresses from Langton and Ray's (also recommended) debut, House of Plants, with clear and practical advice for propagating your indoor plants. With organic gardening and sustainability at its heart, this beautiful book makes a lot of complex information wonderfully accessible.
Is it cheating to recommend my own book? Possibly. But I wrote How to Grow Stuff because I felt I couldn’t find a gardening book that took my lack of knowledge, space, time and money seriously. Twenty plants, all of which I’ve grown on the balcony during my first two years of gardening: it really does cover the most basic of basics. More established growers will find it rudimental, but if you want to start growing your own herbs, flowers and veg, this will get you on the right path.
When she was a girl, Alice Vincent loved her grandfather's garden - the freedom, the calm, the beauty of it. Twenty years later, living in a tiny flat in South London, that childhood in the garden feels like a dream.When she suddenly finds herself uprooted, heartbroken, living out of a suitcase and yearning for the comfort of home, Alice starts to plant seeds. She nurtures pot plants and vines on windowsills and draining boards, filling her new space with green, and with each unfurling petal and budding leaf, she begins to come back to life.Mixing memoir, botanical history and biography, Rootbound examines how bringing a little bit of the outside in can help us find our feet in a world spinning far too fast.
Post a comment below telling us which genres you love to read outside and we will pick five readers to each receive a signed copy of Alice Vincent's Rootbound: Rewilding a Life. We'll pick winners after Thursday 26th March 2020. Congratulations James Silcock, Laura 'Lime' Muir, Geoffrey Thomas, Solange & Rosie Auckland, please get in touch with us.
5 x winners will each receive a signed copy of Alice Vincent's Rootbound: Rewilding a Life
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