Natural Selection - A Year in the Garden (PEARSON, Dan)

One of the great joys of the gardening year is the fact that the garden forces you to pay attention to the here and now. Every week is different from the next, but there is also reassurance in the repetition; the inevitability of spring blossom, and the flare of the berries at the other end of the growing season. A single year's experience is like the growth that accompanies it. It builds and layers and enriches.

"Dan's acute observation and sensitive use of words help us to look with care and see so much more for ourselves." - Beth Chatto

"When it sings, a garden will have the power to transport and to lead you to a place that is magical... It is an oasis for creation, available to anyone with a little space and the compunction to get their hands dirty."

In Natural Selection, Dan Pearson draws on ten years of his Observer columns to explore the rhythms and pleasures of a year in the garden. Travelling between his city-bound plot in Peckham and twenty acres of rolling hillside in Somerset, he celebrates the beautiful skeletons of the winter garden, the joyous passage into spring, the heady smell of summer's bud break and the flaring of colour in autumn.

Dan Pearson's irresistible enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge overflow in a book teeming with tips to inspire your own space, be it a city window box or country field. Bringing you a new-found appreciation of nature, both wild and tamed, reading Natural Selection is a deeply restorative experience.