Gardening Books

[Small pumpkin]

I was a bit bored last night so looked at the WOrld of B00ks website - specifically all the gardening books ranked by price - cheapest being £1.99 which included P&P.

Ten books later I placed my order!

The titles give some idea of how my mind works;-
A Garden from 100 packets of seed *
A Gentle plea for Chaos; Reflections from an English garden
How to grow food - A Wartime Guide*
Led by the Nose: A Garden of Smells
The 3000 Mile garden
No Nonsense Vegetable gardening*
The Companion Garden*

and a couple of other "conventional" ones.
That's 10 books for less than £24.

Hope I don't get bored again tonight.

A couple of those * titles sound very interesting. But I must resist . I'm after a new camera so I can boar you all with more photos

[Babru]

Thanks for all this, I love gardening books. I've just ordered a second hand copy of the Jenny Joseph book Led by the Nose, it sounds just up my street.

When I first started gardening I bought a copy of the Reader's Digest Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants and Flowers, and read it from cover to cover. At the time I had a very small shady garden so I was researching plants for difficult places. Nowadays with the Internet, it's much easier to find plants for different locations, but not back in the 1980s. I still have a copy of the Reader's Digest book though, #2 as the original was so tatty from much use.

At the moment my favourite gardening books are:
Ken Thomson: The Sceptical Gardener
Ken Thomson: No Nettles Required
KT is a plant ecologist, and writes about the science behind gardening and wildlife, such as compost heaps, gardening by the moon, compost tea as a foliar spray etc. All fascinating.

Last current favourite:
John Lewis-Stempel: The Wildlife Garden
Lots of practical advice on how to build a garden that is wildlife friendly.

I just moved to a house with a large paved garden, with only bamboo growing in it (in the process of being removed), so the only way is up for wildlife no matter what I end up planting.....

[veggiechicken]

I'm reading Margery Fish's "We made a garden" (East Lambrook Manor in Somerset). Margery and her husband Walter were not gardeners but worked for the Daily Mail in London. In 1937, sensing the threat that war would bring, they decided to move out of London and buy a house in the country. A rundown 15th century manor house and an adjoining 2 acres of farmland and orchard.
Walter and Margery didn't always see eye to eye on how to garden and its quite amusing to read.
I'm only a few chapters in, but its gripping me and I'm rationing myself to a couple of chapters a night.

[Babru]

absolutely essential reading up here is Fruit and Vegetables for Scotland by Kenneth Cox and Caroline Beaton, simple down to earth book with lots or experience of real conditions here

Ken Cox has also published Garden Plants for Scotland which is the non-edible companion book. I bought it for my sister-in-law when she moved from Somerset to Moray (a shock to the gardening system) and she's found it very useful. I naturally invested in a copy for myself too...

[Babru]

Just been on World of Books site - new to me, surprisingly. Three for two promotion running, postage included (no nasty checkout surprises), just purchased RHS guides on pruning and propagation, plus John Lewis-Stempel's book Wildlife Gardening (only had this from the library before - now I'll have my OWN copy). All for under a tenner, can't be bad!

[veggiechicken]

Awesome Books is good too. They have "bundles" of books on a theme and there's a gardening bundle of 3 RHS books (the massive great ones) for £6.99, incl p&p. I've been tempted but I already have 2 of them so it would be daft (don't say it!).

I bought 5 more gardening books last week.

[nickdub]

Haven't bought any gardening books for a while, so it was probably unwise of me to revisit this thread.

Anyway having seen Margery Fish's "We made a garden" mentioned by someone (no names, no pack-drill ) I did a quick search for it on Amazon. Due to the wonders of technology and understood only perhaps by the writers of the search algorithms there, one of the 10 or so results returned was "
An Englishman's Home: The Adventures of an Eccentric Gardener" Tom Hart Dyke - which looked intriguing (I'm easily sidetracked by books),

Having checked Ebay I found this offered a little cheaper there, so put in an order. Now what was it I was looking for again ... ?

[Babru]

Awesome Books is good too. They have "bundles" of books on a theme and there's a gardening bundle of 3 RHS books (the massive great ones) for £6.99, incl p&p. I've been tempted but I already have 2 of them so it would be daft (don't say it!).

I bought 5 more gardening books last week.

Wow Awesome Books alright! My first visit there too - three Helen Yemm books for under £7 inc postage. Fantastic. I've looked on Amazon for her Thorny Problems book before but couldn't bring myself to pay the sum asked. Now three for the price of one

However this is a dangerous thread, you are all too persuasive and I need to leave now - before I buy any more books I don't need

[veggiechicken]

You can never have too many books.................or seeds.

[veggiechicken]

That's another 3 books ordered.............£6.43
The Eccentric Gardener - Hart Dyke
A Year of living on Wild food - Lewis-Stempel
RHS Herbs

[Small pumpkin]

The Eccentric Gardener - Hart Dyke

I didn't realise you had a book written about you VC

[Cadalot]

I'm looking at my growing pile of gardening books and wondering do I actually need all these?

Perhaps it's time to de clutter the book shelf ?

[veggiechicken]

I don't "need" all of mine but its comforting to have them - even if I've never read them.

[jackarmy]

I'm looking at my growing pile of gardening books and wondering do I actually need all these?

Perhaps it's time to de clutter the book shelf ?

Yep, time moves on and like it or not, technology and advancement is cool , its the trumps that abuse it that wreck me

[Bumblingbroccoli]

I read the veg and fruit expert books, the allotment year and Carol Klein. Also rhs guide to organic gardening and various guides to pruning etc

What I would love is a book on veg growing and climate change. If we're going to have hotter summers, more extreme weather and judging by recent years here in Berkshire mild winters until Feb when it suddenly becomes v cold, how does all these things affect when and how to sow and plant veg?