Just in time for christmas

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There is too much snow in my garden to do anything more active than admire it and turn the compost so that the birds can get at the wrigglies, so I have turned rather addictively to garden reading.

I have been browsing rather a range of books from RHS guides and encyclopedia to the musings of several Gardeners World presenters and backwards to the real golden oldies.

It is a frustrating business – the encyclopedias show mouthwatering pictures without any form of real meat – I can’t really believe in their plants. On the other hand the gardening celebs seem like a dull lot – even Monty Don. But the oldies are a real gem. My memory is already rubbish, but I will go to my grave with echoes of Vita Sackville West commenting on a small garden of “perhaps half an acre” or Margaret Fish plotting all winter to put in a new terraced feature only to have her husband come along and say ‘Alright now we’ll put in the pole roses’.

So a little late perhaps for christmas, but if anyone really wants a decent book to read, my recommendations would be:

- In Your Garden by Vita Sackville West
- We Made a Garden by Margaret Fish
- The Well-Tempered Garden by Christopher Lloyd

On this last one I should add a rider that Christopher Lloyd appears to have been considerably more fond of plants than women for whom he has quite a caustic tongue at times during the book. For me, this is redeemed by the fact that I can close the book when I am cross with him, and also his lovely warm sense of humour, which takes him on several literary digressions as well as into the pond on one occasion.

I would love to know what you are all reading – oh and finally I would avoid Beth Chatto like the plague – long lists of scientific names with scant feeling for the garden itself.

• 21 Dec, 2009
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