Every spring I find myself thumbing through garden books picking up bits of inspiration and dreaming of what could be and the summer that is to come.

One of my favourite gardeners is the ruggedly dishy Monty Don. I love the way he writes – beautiful eloquent prose brim full of his enthusiasm. This year I’ve treated myself to another of his books: The Ivington Diaries. This is his diary of how he and his wife Sarah bought a derelict but very ancient house and transformed the house and subsequently the garden. I haven’t read very far yet – it’s a bit of a tome – but it’s full of the snippets of his everyday gardening experiences and so far I’m loving it. It’s also making me feel totally inspired to be a little bolder with my own garden, which slowly over the last 17 years has transitioned from a neglected wilderness into something on the way to being an English country garden in the hills in Switzerland.

Gardens need such a lot of work. It’s lovely to potter around on a beautiful day and I find being able to see progress incredibly rewarding, but there are quite a lot of days that are totally frustrating – like when the slugs have eaten all the newly planted seedlings or when weeds have totally got the upper hand. That’s when I find reading gardening books so helpful. They give me new ideas and new impetus. They inspire me to taken chances on new plants or be brave enough to change something that hasn’t really worked.

Monty works a treat. And he’s easy on the eyes too….!

Helen

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 at 6:36 am and is filed under Books, Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.