Looking for inspiration, Gillian Vine examines the new crop of gardening books.
However, there are enough good, practical tips and useful information in Tim Marshall's Composting (ABC Books paperback, $35) to justify buying this Australian-produced title.
Marshall explains in detail the different methods to be used for compost heaps, plastic composting bins and garbage-bag composting, and emphasises the use of hot manures (poultry and pigeon) to raise the temperature of materials to speed them along.
It's easy to tell the author is a bloke: in his list of compostible materials, he includes human urine, which he suggests collecting in a flask.
Try that one, lady gardeners.
Buying the book, the gardener can save its price by doing things on the cheap in the way Fowler suggests - using old pallets and plastic to make a cold frame for tender plants, sawdust to keep slugs away from plants or making compost instead of buying bags of it.
A good introduction to most aspects of gardening with the emphasis on freebie or inexpensive approaches.
Putting our plants in context is Plant Heritage New Zealand, by Tony Foster (Penguin Books, $50).
This is not a gardening book but because it looks at what makes New Zealand plants special - origins, evolution and human use - it could justify a place on the gardener's bookshelf.
High-quality paper ensures good reproduction of the numerous photographs that show a representative selection of natives.
Compare the coloured photographs in a book from 20 years ago with those in a 2008 publication and the lift in quality is generally very noticeable.
Sadly, this is not the case with The Artful Gardener (Godwit, pbk, $59.99), whose Chinese printers have badly let down Auckland photographer Gil Hanly and writer Rose Thodey.
And the book itself? Just another coffee-table volume of photographs from around the world. A sad effort.
It is a solid book by two Australians, photographer Marg Thornell and her daughter, writer Kate Thornell, who live in the Macedon Ranges, north of Melbourne.
Their starting point is that "you can always be inspired by what other people have done . . . there is probably nothing new under the sun in gardening, just new ways of using existing techniques".
The pair use simple text and hundreds of photographs to get their message across, dividing the book into 23 sections as varied as seasonal gardens; climbers and borders; art, sculpture and stone; cottage, artists' and kitchen gardens.
It is interesting to note that Garden Details, whose photographic reproduction cannot be faulted, was printed in China by Everbest, the same company responsible for The Artful Gardener.
