Which one of us doesn’t like to settle down by the fire of a winter’s night, a glass of mulled wine and a great gardening book in hand? With that tranquil vision firmly in mind to fortify you over the busy week ahead, here’s my pick of this year’s crop.
For a book that celebrates the abundant pleasures of home-grown food, pick up a copy of Grow, Cook, Eat by GIY founder Michael Kelly, a handsome publication brimful of hands-on gardening advice and tasty-sounding seasonal recipes contributed by 35 of the country's best known chefs, growers and gardeners, including The Irish Times's own Domini Kemp and Lilly Higgins. Proceeds go towards the new GIY headquarters in Waterford, construction of which begins next year (GIY, €25).
Across the channel, the wonderfully productive kitchen gardens of some of England's most famous chefs/restaurants feature in Kitchen Garden Experts: Twenty Celebrated Chefs & Their Head Gardeners (Frances Lincoln, £20). Written by Cinead McTernan with images by her photographer husband Jason Ingram, this delightful book combines practical growing advice with tasty recipes gleaned from some of England's most experienced food growers and best-known chefs including Raymond Blanc, Sky Gyngell and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.
Just as covetable is A Year at Otter Farm (Bloomsbury, £25) the new book from well-known British gardener and author Mark Diacono, which begins by asking the question 'What do I really want to eat?" before answering it by way of a host of mouth-watering recipes and thoughtful observations on how to make the most of any productive plot.
Gardeners who like their books to be as discussion-provoking as they are thought-provoking will relish
Gardening Myths and Misconceptions
(Green Books, £9.99) by organic gardener Charles Dowding, a charmingly illustrated and intriguing read in which he holds conventional gardening wisdom up to close scrutiny. You might not agree with every one of his conclusions, but that’s half the fun of this book.
Forming part of the same series is
A Miscellany for Garden-Lovers: Facts and Folklore Through the Ages
(Green Books, £9.99) by David Squire, an endearingly odd little volume crammed full of curious garden-related facts and figures on everything from 16th century grafting tools to “bovine weather forecasters”.
Lovers of garden history will also be enthralled by the handsomely produced The Heritage Apples of Ireland by Professor Michael Hennerty, an important work of scholarly research by the former head of UCD's Department of Horticulture that does much to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the history and proper identification of 68 heritage Irish apple cultivars (Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, €30).
Staying with garden history, British Gardens in Time by Katie Campbell (Frances Lincoln, £20) has proved a worthy accompaniment to the excellent BBC series of the same name, aired earlier this year, which examined the evolution of British gardens through the prism of four iconic gardens – Stowe, Biddulph Grange, Nymans and Great Dixter.
The last of these also features in George Plumptre's authoritative work, The English House Country Garden (Frances Lincoln, £25) , a sumptuously illustrated book that tells the stories of "25 of the most charismatic English country house gardens of the 21st-century" and the garden makers and designers behind them.
Three other new books help shed light on the mysterious process of garden making. One is Heaven is a Garden: Designing Serene Spaces for Inspiration and Reflection by distinguished American landscape designer Jan Johnsen (St Lynn's Press, $17.95).
Another is
Unveiling the Landscape
by Chilean landscape architect Teresa Moller (Hatje Catz, €98), a monumental book that explores her work’s deep connection to nature and the wider landscape, while garden designers in search of fresh inspiration will appreciate the treasure-trove quality of the image-driven
Garden Design Close Up
, by Emma Reuss (Thames & Hudson, £24.95).
The creative process of garden-making often spills over into other areas of life, with gardens frequently inspiring the work of some of the world’s best-loved writers including that of Ted Hughes, Jane Austen, and Roald Dahl, a subject explored in depth by author Jackie Bennett in her generously-illustrated, atmospherically-written book
The Writer’s Garden
(Frances Lincoln, £25).
Which are the world’s greatest gardens? Some – but not all – feature in
The Gardener’s Garden
(Phaidon, £60), a lavishly illustrated, thoughtfully compiled (and mightily heavy) compendium of 250 of the world’s most famous gardens, with contributions from a coterie of highly respected garden writers and designers. A fascinating read, as much for the gardens that aren’t included as for those that are.
Parents wishing to foster that same spirit of creativity and adventure in their offspring will find a host of fun-filled garden projects in Dawn Isaac's 101 Things for Kids to Do Outside (Kyle Books, £14.99).
For grown-up gardeners, meanwhile, Ruth Kassinger’s
A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air and Other Secrets of Plants
(William Morrow/Harper Collins $25.99) is an idiosyncratic and infectiously enthusiastic look at the wonderful world of plants.
British flower grower Georgie Newbery has been at the forefront of the move towards a more seasonal and sustainable cut-flower industry; her new book The Flower Farmer's Year (Green Books, £19.99) is jam-packed with valuable nuggets of advice on how to become a fully-fledged flower farmer, from avoiding potential financial pitfalls to choosing the very best varieties.
Meanwhile, for a younger generation of gardeners unsure of where or how to use shrubs in a garden, there’s no better place to start than with a copy of
The Creative Shrub Garden
by Andy McIndoe (Timber Press. $29.95), while flower lovers will relish a copy of dahlia-holic Andy Vernon’s
The Plant Lover’s Guide to Dahlias
, an encyclopaedic and charmingly written guide to these most lusciously lovely of blooms, which the author says “brighten my day, make me smile, and hug my soul”.
The power of plants to bewitch and seduce us is also conveyed with eloquence by gardener and author Stephen Lacey in his comprehensive
The RHS Companion to Scented Plants
(Frances Lincoln, £25), while the delightfully illustrated
Insects of Ireland
by Stephen McCormack , Eugenie Regan and Chris Shields, and
The Wildflowers of Ireland
by well-known expert Zoe Devlin (both Collins Press, both €14.99) prove that the wild plants and insects that inhabit a garden are another important part of its charm.
And even when things go slightly awry in the garden – a painful nettle/wasp sting, a thorn prick, an eye-watering bout of hay-fever – let's not forget plants' power to heal, as proven by Irish horticultural therapist Fiann O'Nuallain's The Holistic Gardener (Mercier Press, €12.99), a fascinating and practical guide to first aid from the garden.
