Joy Larkom’s Just Vegetating (Frances Lincoln, £18.99; Times Books, £14.99) is that rare thing, a discursive book about vegetable growing, just right for someone who already knows how to grow vegetables. Instead of waterboarding the reader with enthusiasm, Larckom tells with compelling charm of how worms can live for 12 years and how moles keep them in larders; how people use vegetables in China, Taiwan and Japan, and of aggressive French grape pickers. Fascinating. It won’t date.
It’s people who shape the changing style of gardens. From 1970 to 2000 Rosemary Verey developed her pretty style of formality at Barnsley House, Cirencester, and brought the potager to England. Tireless author and lecturer in the US, she made gardens for the Prince of Wales and