Professor Stefan Buczacki is one of the world's most renowned botanists having written around 60 books including several standard works of reference. He spent 12 unbroken years as panellist and chairman on BBC Radio Four's Gardener?s Question Time. Join him as he uncovers the wild animals and plants that thrive among the headstones from the graveyard beetle to the mighty yew as he reveals the natural secrets to be found in God's Acre. From the earliest Pagan sites to modern urban cemeteries, burial grounds have always enjoyed a sacred, protected status in the history of society. Consequently, they have become tranquil oases in which wildlife can flourish - a microcosm of the natural habitat long since disappeared from the surrounding area. Buczacki explores the history of churchyards and the landscape as well as what can be done to conserve them for future generations. He looks at plants and fungi, lichens, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, birds and small creatures and shows how deeply churchyards are rooted in British history and literature. We can all look with fresh eyes and be better informed whether or not you are spiritually and religiously motivated. Chapter one opens aptly with Thomas Gray's 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Includes beautiful coloured line art of creatures like frogs, bats, moles, crows and badgers to contemporary photographs, full page colour. 2018 first edition, satin pagemarker.

Having judged Britain in Bloom for 25 years, trained at RHS Wisley and worked for the GLC before becoming a Superintendent of the Central Royal Parks and then Superintendent of Greenwich Royal Park, Jim Buttress is now a judge at the RHS. He presides over the country's favourite flower shows including Chelsea and Hampton Court and has been watched by millions on the BBC's The Big Allotment Challenge. But how did this practical gardener from Purley go on to have one of the most impressive careers in British horticulture? In his warm and funny memoir, Jim takes us from his boyhood obsession with Percy Thrower to his working life with day-to-day duties including anything from having a drink and a chat with the Queen Mother to working out how to water some elephants who had taken up residence in Hyde Park. Jim also reveals what it's like to exhibit and to win gold at the Chelsea Flower Show and shares his many adventures as a judge including a threat with a punch on the nose from the odd irate loser. 'I've spent the vast majority of my life working with some of nature's most beautiful creations, and it has to be said in some pretty incredible settings.' He is a warm-hearted knowledgeable companion through his 306 page story complete with many colour photographs from his own albums.

Beautifully designed with modern graphic illustrations, bring home bouquets that brighten up your living room and learn ideas for planting bulbs and tubers that will bloom in early spring plus perennials for year-round colour. And all that from your balcony or windowsill which can bloom and grow abundantly throughout the seasons and also attract insects, bees and butterflies. It starts with the basics of pre-sowing and sowing, and working with the sun and preparing your boxes, then planting schemes for fresh and dried, sweet peas, wild and waving grasses, echinacea and sun flowers or a box full of beautiful blooming dahlias. Create a cottage garden box, a green winter box, late bloomers and winter colour and even learn the secret of cutting a lovely bunch of flowers or drying them. All about ready to use boxes, potting compost, seeds and flower facts and hardy plants you can sow direct into your box from April like the bupleurum, ox-eye daisy and pot marigold, one of which is edible! You can pickle the flower buds of the ox-eye daisy in vinegar for using as capers and all flowers will produce more buds if you keep cutting out the dead flowers. Includes planting 'recipes' in this beautifully illustrated 128 page book. Colour.

The number one bestseller we are delighted to have discounted, a one-stop treasure trove from the experts at the Royal Horticultural Society that covers every aspect of gardening. Classic borders, flowers to attract wildlife, a vegetable patch - a picturesque garden for all to marvel at is achievable. Delve into this concise and practical guide, fully illustrated with detailed step-by-steps and inspirational gardening ideas. There are instructions for simple hard landscaping such as building a raised bed, creating a pond, laying a patio; advice on controlling weeds and pests; how to water, feed, prune and propagate your garden plants. Learn how to plan, sow, plant and protect your garden throughout the year and discover designing with plants using colour and texture. Grow your own cherries, enjoy summer and autumn perennials, learn about lawns, propagating plants, pruning roses, growing strawberries, peaches, nectarines, cherries, pears, and managing a glut. Garlic, onions, radishes, sweetcorn and use the handy vegetable crop planner from asparagus, potatoes and pumpkins to tomatoes and turnips. Pick up a seed catalogue and the choice is inspiring, and consider quality, taste, organic crops, your time available, a continuous harvest and how to make space and room to grow using containers, walls and fences and mixed planting like mixing globe artichokes, winter kale and Swiss chard, ornamental in their own right. Big beautiful design, hundreds of colour illus., 448pp, 20 x 24cm.

The Royal Horticultural Society in conjunction with publishers Thames & Hudson have created a beautiful mix of design, style and inspiration with over 500 colour illustrations. With plant hardiness charts, glossary and dreamy photographs of swimming pools, patterned pots, lit cascading steps, mosaics, cobblestones, miniature mosses and succulents and alpines, to meadows and mixing it up. When you look at a garden, you may feel drawn to plants whose colours and shapes have been arranged in a particular way. There is something about patterns that sets our minds alight. It serves many purposes - instantly gives a design or space order and structure, creates rhythm and make a garden or area feel unified and complete. This unique and practical guide to creating mood, proportion and scale is packed with inspiring photographs of gardens, borders and features with a wealth of ideas for adapting schemes to fit the area being planted including 'natural' designs as well as more formal approaches. Covers leaf shape and texture, garden layouts, symmetrical and formal, borders and bedding, patios, paths and decks, wall, fences and structures, patterns and water, patterns in garden furniture and large scale patterns. Very glossy paper, 224pp, 19 x 24.6cm, hundreds of colour photos.
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What is more inviting that a sunny garden, full of wonderful colours and the scent of flowers and who captured this better than the Impressionists with their canvasses full of colour and light? This warm Konemann publication explores the rich history and striking evolution of Impressionist garden paintings. By the 1860s, gardens were highly popular in France; the introduction and cross-breeding of new plant and flower species and the opening to the public of the former royal parks had stimulated a great horticultural movement. With their delight in colour, plein-air effects and modern-life themes, the Impressionists and their followers naturally turned to gardens for artistic inspiration. This book follows the spread of the Impressionist garden in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and illustrates not only masterpieces of Impressionism by Monet, Manet, Rousseau, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Morisot, Hanna Pauli, Caillebotte, Cezanne and others, but also works by such forebears as Delacroix, Corot, Courbet and later figures like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Klimt and Sargent and Max Liebermann and Seurat. Plus dappled and inviting tea parties by Pompeo Mariani, pointillism in the Orchard by Theo van Rysselberghe, the lady in red leaning on a lamppost by Jean-Louis Forain. Spectacular illustrations and accessible, engaging text, for the art lover or gardening enthusiast. 28.96 x 26.92cm. Hundreds of colour illustrations, many double page. 260 heavyweight with colour pages, amazing value for money for a glorious art book.
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Grown in the Middle East 2,000 years ago for its pleasing scent and medicinal properties, the rose has become one of the most adored flowers across cultures, no longer selected by nature, but by humans. The rose is well versed at enchanting human hearts, from Shakespeare's sonnets to Bulgaria's Rose Valley, to the thriving rose trade in Africa and the Far East, via museums, high fashion, Victorian England and Belle Epoque France. Bursting with meaning, over the centuries it has come to represent love and sensuality, deceit, death and the mystical unknown and even today is ever present at life's seminal moments. Here we meet an astonishing array of species and hybrids of remarkably different provenance in a story of a hardy, thorny flower and how by beauty and charm it came to seduce the world. Here are pagan, monotheistic roses, mystical, poetic and painted roses and rose gardens and gardening and the business today. Who said flower power was dead? 294pp, colour photos.

From 1936 to 1940, the newly-wed George Orwell lived in a small cottage in Hertfordshire, writing and tending his garden. When Rebecca Solnit visited the cottage, she discovered the descendants of the roses that he had planted many decades before. These survivors, as well as the diaries he kept of his planting and growing, provide a springboard for a fresh look at Orwell's motivations and drives, and the optimism that countered his dystopian vision. It opens up a profound meditation on our relationship to plants, trees and the natural world. Tracking his impact on political thought over the last century, Solnit journeys to England and Russia, Mexico and Columbia, exploring the political and historical events that shaped Orwell's life and her own. She follows his journey from the coalmines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War, from his prescient critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. She makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti's roses, reveals Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in Columbia. A book of reflection, pleasure, beauty and joy as acts of resistance. 308pp, illus.

'Organic Crops for Pots and Small Plots', this beautiful large hardback tome has a foreword by Raymond Blanc. A new generation of gardeners are hungry for the know-how to transform their balconies, front doorsteps and back gardens into spaces to grow edibles. Anna Greenland, rising star of the organic grow-your-own scene, offers the jargon free inspiration, information and confidence to get you going from scratch. She has selected her Top 30 crops which are not only straightforward to grow, but also yield vegetables, herbs, fruits and edible flowers. Chapters cover Windowsills, Pots, Raised Beds, How to Grow, Troubleshooting, A Year-Round Planner, Crop Plans for Two Raised Beds, and the Top 30 and the Jargon Busting section. Alpine strawberries, a recipe for Rose Geranium Syrup which is delicious with Gin, Vodka or drizzled over ice cream, Rhubarb Shrub, Pickled Nasturtium Seeds or Butter, Coconut Calendula Salve for soothing stings and burns, all about apples, sage, parsley, chervil and chives, Gardener's Delight tomatoes on the vine, summer garden salads, French and runner beans, potatoes, chard, carrots and more. There is a monthly planner showing tasks and planting times for key crops, and compost recipes, weeding and feeding. A big glamorous handbook packed with colour photographs, 224pp.

'A Beginner's Guide to Cultivating Healthy Plant Care Habits' whether you are bringing home your first plant or already tending to a healthy row of green on your windowsill, your expert guide gives accessible tips and sage advice. In a big bright and breezy colourful large softback, we start with a short history of plant evolution, what makes a plant a house plant, plant nurseries and distribution, becoming a plant parent, your lifestyle and home, the five best first plants and the elements of plant care like food, re-potting, moving your plant, age and growth, propagation and making more plants, and sickness. Experts from nursery hedge growers to online content creators have contributed. One of the many colour photos shows a skylight keeping a bookshelf full of plants drenched in filtered, bright light. A wild pothos plant is an opportunistic climbing vine which hails from French Polynesia, perfect for hanging baskets. There is the popular snake plant, rubber plants, spider plants, ZZ plant (an East African succulent), staghorn fern from Australia with its architectural shape, the Chinese money plant, flowering begonia plant, common palm, zebra cactus and runner tree with its green and red foliage and of course the ever popular monster plant or Monstera. For each there is a note on light, water, temperature, level of care and whether it is safe for children or pets. Last of all there is a Planting Journal to record your plant by its nickname, common or Latin name, date brought home, pot size and diameter, environment, watering, soil and root health and notes and observations through the seasons. A glamorous 192 page softback published by Princeton Architectural Press. Colour photos.