Gardening Book Shop - "How To" Books

A comprehensive guide to most things that you could ever want to do in the garden. Stacks of information, usefully and plentifully illustrated. Well set out in logical sections. A wonderfully comprehensive reference guide for the beginner and expert alike. If you only buy one gardening book it has to be this one.
Review

RHS A-Z garden plants
Hardcover - 1080 pages (2 October 2003)                   

I don't really think that there is any alternative for the plant enthusiast than this mighty tome. It's the big brother of the RHS Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers below. It's certainly not for everyone as it's set out alphabetically according to the Latin names of plants and treats all plants equally, be they sold by the million or only obtainable with great difficulty as they're so hard to grow. If you are serious about gardening though, buy it now. In a few years time when you get it, you'll have spent more money on other books in the meantime that will then become redundant.

A very useful descriptive guide to thousands of garden plants, lavishly illustrated. Set out into trees / shrubs / perennials etc. and sub-divided into colours and seasons of interest. An excellent buy for most people. A good book for the amateur enthusiast, and better value than buying several smaller volumes each on a different theme.
Review

Alan Titchmarsh, the Gardener's Year - Alan Titchmarsh

Best-selling author Alan Titchmarsh brings us the definitive guide to gardening throughout the year. This ideal gardening companion will be released to coincide with a BBC2 6 x 30 television series to be broadcast in early 2006. "The Gardener's Year" is not about quick fixes, design makeovers or hard drudge, but simply about knowing what you should be doing in your garden, when, and why. Month by month Alan gives us the low-down on how to keep your garden looking its best. In-depth and packed full of useful tips, it includes advice on everything from what seeds you can plant out in your vegetable plot in May, to how to keep your hanging baskets looking stunning in September. Alan's most recent gardening books "How to be a Gardener 1 & 2" were the fastest selling gardening books ever with sales of over 1 million copies to date.

The Complete How to Be a Gardener - Alan Titchmarsh

Whether you're a complete beginner or a keen gardener, there are always times when it would help to have a reliable expert at your side. In this "Complete How to be a Gardener", Alan Titchmarsh draws on his extensive knowledge and experience to give you a comprehensive guide to becoming a successful gardener. Alan starts with the fundamentals, covering the absolute essentials that every gardener needs to know, including information on how plants work and what they need to survive, as well as advice on where to begin if you're a first-time gardener. Each chapter includes practical advice and step-by-step techniques and projects, as well as a host of Alan's favourite plants to help you in your selection. With its perfect balance of down-to-earth information and inspirational ideas, this complete paperback edition of "How to be a Gardener" gets to the very heart of gardening and provides a comprehensive reference manual for any garden owner. "How to be a Gardener 1" was the fastest selling gardening book ever and, between them, books 1 and 2 have sold over 1 million copies.

Design Your Garden  Diarmuid Gavin

Today's most innovative garden designer, Diarmuid Gavin, shares advice, inspiration and ideas on how to design your garden. Diarmuid's ten, easy-to-follow, practical steps cover everything from the basics of good design, to assessing your plot and using plants for style and affect. This practical guide will give you the confidence to create and express your own unique style, whatever your garden space.

Delia's Kitchen Garden: A Beginners' Guide to Growing Fruit and Vegetables  - Gay Search, Delia Smith

Delia Smith has always been most concerned with the quality and flavour of the ingredients she uses, and nothing comes fresher than fruit and vegetables from your own garden. Last year, the opportunity came for her to work with her longstanding friend, garden expert Gay Search, to create her own kitchen garden for the first time. This guide, written by Gay with 50 recipes from Delia, is for Delia and others like her who are interested in good food and want to try their hand at growing their own. It follows a year in the life of her kitchen garden, with a chapter devoted to each month, containing detailed advice on sowing and planting, fruit and vegetable varieties and how to harvest. With failsafe recipes by Delia that use the produce at its peak, this book is expected to do for kitchen gardening what How to Cook did for culinary teaching. Suitable for first-time horticulturists and cooks of all levels, the book is lavishly designed and has over 250 colour photographs.

Principles of Horticulture - C.R. Adams, M. P. Early

Principles of Horticulture is an excellent introduction to a wide range of aspects of commercial and leisure horticulture. Written in a highly accessible and readable style, this book has already proved invaluable to a broad selection of readers, particularly students on horticulture courses and keen amateur gardeners. It also provides a handy basic reference for professionals.

20 Best Small Gardens - Tim Newbury
Paperback - 96 pages new edition (30 September, 1999)

Now that space is demanding even more of a premium many people find themselves with a smaller plot of land than they would like, but there is no reason why this cannot be successful and appealing. 20 Best Small Gardens is a book devoted to making the best possible use of a limited area. As the title suggests, the book looks at every conceivable kind of small garden from Roof Garden to Courtyard and offers advice on how to make every inch count. Tim Newbury looks at each garden in turn addressing design, planting and features. For example the Sloping Garden that seems problematically long and narrow, so Newbury suggests that the garden be divided into three separate, equal areas. If you plan a patio by the house, a circular lawn, and fruit and vegetable plot at the bottom end of the garden, the space is used to maximum effect.

The book covers a wide variety of small gardens and will offer ideas for all tastes. The Water Garden, for example will "create a mood of tranquility and peace" and Newbury offers aquatic plant types to complement the garden's split-level pools. In contrast the Foliage Garden is a full of flamboyant plants, perfect for disguising oddly proportioned areas. Newbury includes a list of plants and illustrated planting plan, with variations to suit different shaped gardens.

This book has something for everyone. It ranges across formal, modern, and beginners' gardens and the style is accessible and easy to follow. The index of plants allows favourites to be included and the illustrations are instructive. It is not a glossy coffee table book, rather a really useful guide to best utilise a small garden.

Includes illustrated designs and plant lists for creating different types of small gardens, including gravel, scented, low-maintenance, and year-round gardens.

The Complete Guide to Building Decks - Bryan Trandem (Editor) Paperback - 304 pages 2nd Ed (26 April, 2001)

A source of tips, techniques and instructions on building decks. This second edition of the book opens with a revised portfolio section to help readers gain ideas, then moves to design and planning information. Next there are comprehensive sections on basic and deck building techniques, followed by a chapter that shows step-by-step procedures for building seven popular deck designs. As a bonus, the book includes a chapter on popular deck accessories, and also shows how to modify a deck design for a truly custom look. In addition to the basic deck-building methods covered, readers will also learn how to build multi-level decks, how to build stairways with landings, how to build curved decks, how to build decks with unusual angles, how to create overhead screens, and how to add electrical service and lighting fixtures to a deck.

A great book for the novice and experienced deck builder.

The Garden Planner - Robin Williams
Paperback - 168 pages new edition of 2nd revised edition (5 March, 1998)

This is the fifth reprint of a book first published in 1990 which says something in itself. Williams, an award winning designer of more than 1,200 gardens himself, sets out here to impart practical advice through the many stages of designing and constructing a garden. An excellent, highly useful and informative little book, now in softback format , for the serious gardener. Everyone from lords of the manor to the owner of a new semi could benefit from this.

"Incredible value for money"  "Worth its weight in gold"

The Ultimate Garden Designer - Tim Newbury
Paperback - 256 pages new edition (14 September, 2000)

Easy to read and full of ideas. Covering: cottage gardens, kitchen gardens, gardens for entertaining, family gardens, gardens for the disabled, the plant enthusiasts' garden, water gardens, japanese-style gardens, formal gardens, coastal gardens, wildlife gardens, woodland gardens, front gardens and roof gardens.  

Almost all aspects are covered: ideas for garden features, pools, streams and water features, rock gardens, pergolas and arches, summerhouses, gazebos etc, patios and paving, steps, slopes, walls, fences, trellises, screens, beds and borders, herb gardens pots and containers. All this plus a plant directory.

"This is a must-have"

RHS through the year, Ian Spence

As well as specific monthly tasks for every part of the garden, there are at-a-glance checklists, expert plant advice and tips on organization including "Get Ahead" and "Is it Too Late?" With more than 1000 full-colour photographs of star plants for each month, step-by-step photographic sequences of garden projects and illustrated tasks. To help you upgrade your garden or make maintenance easier, there is a DIY project suggestion for every month, each of which has been tried and tested to guarantee success. Good gardening depends on timing - when to plant and when to prune, when to feed and when to water, when to build and when to maintain.  

Plants for places, RHS
paperback (25th July 2001)

Want a grass for a hot dry area? A wall shrub for a North East facing position? Trees for chalk? This book will give you a variety of answers for almost all possible situations.

1000 pages of plant info crammed into a small pocket sized book. It's very handy for referring to when buying at the garden centre and is well worth the price. Plants are grouped together by where they should be planted which helps save you making any costly errors. Take this shopping with you and ignore the tags in the plant pots which are designed more to get you to buy the plant than give advice.

The Patio Garden, Hazel Evans
paperback

If you don't have a patio, then you're missing out on half the usefulness of your garden, this book goes into all the detail you would ever want to cover and at less than £10 is a necessity when it comes to getting your outdoor area just right.

RHS pruning and training

This book is set out into sections on trees, ornamental shrubs, fruit etc. and then within each section split into the names of the plants. Once you've got your garden started, or if you've inherited a fairly mature garden, this will help you to make the most of it. It will tell you for just about everything, when is the best time to prune, how to do it and whether or not (and how) to take drastic renovatory action or dig something out and start again.
Review

Best Shade Plants, Stefan Buczacki
Paperback 96 pages, Oct 98

Shade gardens or shady parts of gardens can be some of the nicest places to be, you can wander around them almost whatever the weather. The shade is a sanctuary from the dazzling brightness and heat of summer sun, they are enclosed and feel "safer" than being out on the sunny plains. Not many plants enjoy shade though (as opposed to tolerating it - becoming weak and leggy in the process), so this book answers a substantial need. Highly recommended, if you have any shady areas in your garden, you'll find lots of things in here that will do well.

Building Decks (Black and Decker Home Improvement Library), Cy Decosse
Paperback - 128 pages (April 1990)

A good comprehensive guide to deck building. Like most books on decking this one is written by and for Americans and so needs a bit of interpretation. If you are planning a deck at all beyond the basic ground level, square or rectangular, then this is the book for you. For first time and more ambitious deck builders, this book will answer all of your questions and give you answers to questions you didn't know you needed to ask.

Also try "Ground Force", Practical Garden Projects

The Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
Paperback - 256 pages [New Ed.] (4 January, 1997)

This book calls readers to respect the land, reap the harvest, waste nothing, stay healthy and live well. Whether or not you ever intend to make your own bricks (find out how to if you're interested) there's plenty here for everyone with any interest in the subject. A lifestyle book from the days when such things had not been invented (first published in 1976). If you have an interest the this may just help to tip your views towards a more radical approach than you thought you would have.