NEWS! 

Lucy Bellamy's Brilliant and Wild (with Jason Ingram) has won the Garden Media Guild's Practical Gardening Book of the Year! At the awards ceremony on 29 November, Caroline Foley also celebrated winning European Garden Book of the Year for Topiary, Knots and Parterres.

In the media, Double Flowers by Nicola Ferguson is Rachel de Thame's Gardening Book of the Year in The Sunday Times. She says "Surprisingly little has been written on the subject. They nevertheless deserve the reassessment afforded by this scholarly and fascinating book." The Generous Gardener by Caroline Donald is also reviewed by Rachel de Thame - "Gardens are about plants, but they are equally about people. I make no apology for including this title by the gardening editor of this newspaper, as she invites us into the private gardens of the great and the good. And which of us does not enjoy peering over the neighbour's wall?"

The Generous Gardener featured in The Daily Telegraph's Gardening Books of the Year ("As much about people as it is about flowers...If you can't get to see a place for inspiration, reading about it is the next best thing." - Mary Keen), alongside Richard Bisgrove's Gardening Across the Pond ("Earns its place on the bookshelves of enthusiastic garden historians and gardeners interested in where plants come from." - Ruth Chivers) and John Brooke's A Landscape Legacy ("This attractively produced book is essential reading for anyone interested in garden design and history." - Tim Richardson). 

In The Times Books of the Year, Stephen Anderton chose Isabel and Julian Bannerman's Landscape of Dreams, just published in paperback -  “Now here’s real glitz, of a truly wonderful romantic kind” and Gardening Across the Pond - “Full of surprises".

The Generous Gardener and A Landscape Legacy are among Ursula Buchan's "best gardening books of the year" in The Spectator - “We are fortunate that he lived to complete this book, for he was an inspired teacher and mentor as well as a designer, and every page, with its plans, elevations and photographs, underscores not only his expertise but his powers in communicating it.”

George Carter's Setting the Scene and Lucy Bellamy's Brilliant and Wild are among the Books of the Year in The Lady, and Brilliant and Wild also features in The Daily Mail - "This charming book is aimed squarely at inexperienced gardeners with a modest budget who want quick results. Like all the best gardening books this one leaves you itching to get out in your own patch."

In Harpers and Queen, Allison Pearson chose "5 books to add to your reading list this autumn". Nestling between new novels by Michael Ondaatje, Kate Atkinson, Pat Barker and Sofka Zinovieff is our very own Clare Hastings' The House in Little Chelsea  "This beguiling little book mixes fact and fiction to recreate the life of a house in Chelsea – the house in which the author lives – from 1873 to the 1920s. Perfect Christmas present for aunts, and everyone else really."  We couldn't have said it better ourselves!

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