Worm (of sorts)

I love books too, for reference the RHS encyclopedia is my first choice
I am fascinated by the prewar books too.....

You've got some lovely books. I enjoy browsing too. It's nice to just look leasurely at the photos, and dream ... lol

Wonderful collection of books ... :o)

ooh another bookworm. thats a lovely collection. I have some favs that are so old the pictures are in black and white.
my oh has books on old push bikes that he reads and rereads so I dont have that problem.

I have a lot of gardening books and at this time of year ...when I can´t do anything in the garden I love to go through them again and look for ideas for the spring and summer. It doesn´t matter how many times you read a book you ( I ) will always find something that was missed before.

We also have a lot of books that we enjoy reading. A nurseryman whom we were friendly with passed on a couple of years ago and his wife asked me to take responsibilty for disposing of his extensive library. Many were given away or sold for club funds but we now have many of the old alpine gardening classics dating back to the 1930's.

For recreating the jungle look, I'd recommend 'Encyclopedia of Exotic Plants for Temperate Climates' by Will Giles

I still have an old Percy Thrower gardening book. There he stands in the photo's, hands in pockets and pipe in mouth, proudly looking at rows of regimented dahlias , and you realise how gardening has changed over the last 40 years.Still good advice of course in the book about most things, but good gardens then looked like municipal plantings. How times change, and often for the better.

Thanks all - Lovely to hear about all your favourites!

Andrew R- thanks for the recommendation - guess what - I just bought a Will Giles book- ! I didn't put it on the list as I only got it last week so I haven't had a chance yet to read it properly. I also have an old recording still on my Sky+ of a garden he did on the telly. I watched it again on Sunday (while dreaming of Spring!) The weird thing was I'd kept the program without realising who the Designer was, so choosing a book by him was pure coincidence! The one I got is "The New Exotic Garden".

Sarah - if you're ever in Norwich, try to gt to see his garden if you can

Thanks Andrew- will do!

some good books..i have an old book called The Gardening Year which i refer to loads..always good to have something to browse through..

good blog

As gardening hardbacks are expensive I have taken to browsing in charity shops and have been AMAZED at the amount of gardening books there, both large and small old and new etc.

we should have a gardening book swap forum on here..