There are many books which purport to describe the classic English cottage garden, but they are only vehicles for handsome photographs of landscape designers’ misguided efforts. Roy Genders, an English expert on horticulture, approached this topic with exemplary historical skill.

Trees are full of secrets. Under their serene and placid beauty complex machinery works fiendishly hard to maintain the long supply lines. In his book, The Tree, Colin Tudge brings an easy style born of rich understanding and broad knowledge to a generic topic.

Kenneth Helphand, a noted landscape architect and professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon, Eugene, has come up with an amazing theme. He had seen a photograph of soldiers in the first world war standing next to a garden they had made at the front. The image stuck in his mind and led him to a series of researches culminating in this book.

Allyson Hayward, a member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, has done a tremendous service in bringing Norah Lindsay, 1873 – 1948, into clear focus after she had been flitting about in the shadows of garden history.